Your Garden Variety
by CSI Clue
Summary: An assignment for Sara, Greg and Grissom might end up being a bit more than they can handle.
1. Chapter 1

YOUR GARDEN VARIETY

_Chapter One: Bad Moon Rising_

GREG

I knew it was going to happen SOME night. It just had to—I mean Las Vegas is pretty big, and with all the outlying cities and towns and 'burbs it sort of made a slip-up like this inevitable. The dispatchers do what they can, and most of the time things get checked and rechecked before the assignments are passed on to us, but hey, mistakes happen.

I would have said 'shit happens' but considering the last site Sara and I visited was a manure plant outside of Pahrump, I've had enough shit to last me a lifetime.

Bovine byproduct—don't go there.

Especially in new shoes.

Anyway, here's how it started. An assignment came in for a multiple homicide out on Pine Road, and since it was a slow night, Grissom opted to have me and Sara go with him to process the job. I didn't mind—Sara's good company and I always get a kick out of Grissom's way of doing things. You'd think he'd want to back off the fieldwork as he gets older, but not the Bug Man, no way. He's still got it, and I'm still picking things up around him.

For example, he dusts like nobody's business, you know? I've watched him hundreds of times, and while everyone else is good, Grissom's a master. He focuses that concentration and I swear he sees prints before he even has the jar of powder open. I don't know if he plays chess, but he'd be dangerous competition if he did, because when Grissom puts his mind to a puzzle, it's like, half-solved already.

So we piled into the Denali and headed off. Sara was behind the wheel, which was cool. The drive took us north for a while, out into the 'burbs. I knew better than to ask for the radio, but Grissom was in a mellow mood, talking about an old case that centered around a piece of evidence eaten by a dog, so I stretched out in the back, listening in.

"What kind of evidence would be worth anything after it had been through a digestive tract?" Sara asked him.

Good question—Sara's smart that way.

"Well in this case it was the victim's medical ID bracelet—the killer had stuck it in a lump of hamburger to make the dog swallow it. Unfortunately for him, the Animal Control people noticed the dog was listless and had their vet check him over. One x-ray later and they found the bracelet."

"Poor pooch," I offered and I saw Sara nod. Grissom made a little agreeing noise.

"So the question was, why make the dog swallow it? Why didn't the killer just take it with him?" Sara demanded.

"Because the murder had been set up to look like a mauling, and the hope was that the blame would fall on the dog. What the murder hadn't counted on is that knife wounds and bite marks are very different; especially once the wounds have been cleaned and examined. Remember, this case was from nearly thirty years ago, before all the high technology we have at our disposal now."

"All eyeball work, huh?" I asked, and Grissom made another little affirmative sound in his throat. Sara turned the corner and I noticed that the street was dark—no lights on anywhere. She slowed down.

"Okay, are they having a power outtage? And we should be close—anybody see any squad cars?"

I looked around; we were at a little strip mall only four stores long. It had a Manly Hammers Hardware store on one end, an ice cream parlor—Cone, Cone on the Range I think; a hair salon and a shoe store on the other end. The whole thing was set on a corner lot surrounded by chain link, and the only streetlight was out, so we had almost no visibility. There were two cars in the parking lot, and one of them was a black and white. The driver's door was open but the car itself was empty and dark.

Creepy—that was the perfect description of the situation, actually.

Just plain creepy.

Grissom had his flashlight out and he looked at the assignment slip. "Sara, are you sure this is thirteen oh one Pine?"

"It's thirteen oh one Pine Road," she told him a little defensively. "It was Pine Road, right?"

Grissom squinted at the paper; I looked over his shoulder at the sheet and we both kind of grimaced at the same time. He spoke up. "It doesn't say—no road or avenue or lane after the address. We'd better call dispatch and see if we're in the right spot."

SARA

This wasn't good. I'm not prone to letting myself get stirred up on the job, yeah with the exception here and there, but to be honest, the whole situation was a little unnerving. I know we work the nightshift, but frankly, Vegas usually has so much light—direct and indirect—that visibility at most scenes isn't a problem. And we have these big honk'n Mag-lites too—stare too long into one and you could fry a retina, that's for sure. But this particular assignment was too dark for my comfort.

It helped that I had Grissom there, and Greg. Wouldn't have minded Grissom by himself, because lately he and I have been . . . well, back on some serious footing. A couple of weeks earlier he'd asked me to dinner and after a few false starts he finally, FINALLY admitted that he wanted us to be something more than what were.

Surprised? Yeah, I was, a little. But more than that, I was relieved. See, one of the big and beautiful things about Grissom is that he's not really a halfway sort of guy when it comes to commitments. He loves his insects; he loves us—his team—and he's devoted to the truth. I'm thinking that the truth must have clocked him a good one at some recent point, because I know it took a lot for him to talk to me.

Anyway, we'd started going out on our days off, getting comfortable with each other as Sara and Griss and not CSIs Sidle and Grissom. And we didn't even have to talk about keeping things very, very quiet; it was just sort of instinctive for both of us. So in a way it was good to have Greg as a buffer, because under other circumstances, Grissom in the dark would have been sort of-- tempting?

I mean come on—we were almost past that three date point, and I'd just found out that Grissom was NOT always a gentleman, particularly when he gets his butt squeezed.

Okay, TMI, but it does show how far he's come, you know?

So we got out of the Denali and moved towards the patrol car. Grissom was ahead of us, moving his light along the ground and his beam hit a dark spot that Greg and I recognized immediately.

Yeah. Blood.

"Fresh—it hasn't congealed much," I noted. Grissom cast the halo of light further ahead, closer to the door of the squad car and we see more blood. Not a lot, but some splashes. It was just enough to make things very creepy, but not so much we were freaking out. Greg pulled out his cell phone and looked at Grissom, who nodded.

"Dispatch, this is CSI Sanders—"

"Go ahead," came Lou's voice, barely audible through a lot of static. I nudged Grissom's shoulder and motioned back to the Denali; he nodded and I went to get my kit. After I grabbed it, I took a long moment to look around the place, and it was definitely . . . unsettling.

I've been at some horrific crime scenes in the past few years, and seen death in all sorts of situations, but this one had something else to it; a sort of tang in the air. Like ozone; a discharge that I couldn't put my finger on, but it was making me break out in goose bumps. It bothered me that I couldn't figure out what was making me so unsettled—after all, it was just an empty parking lot inside a chain link fence with no lights and a sort of eerie shush—

--And that was another layer of scary right there. See, wherever we go on this job, there's always something to hear in the background: cops, sirens, quiet discussions, radio conversations—sounds of life amid death, if you know what I mean. Out here, just on the fringe of suburb and desert there was . . . nothing like that. Just some breeze skittering stuff along the asphalt.

I turned and looked back at Grissom, who was still squatting by the blood, and felt better seeing him there. For some reason he's just really solid and reassuring to me when he's doing his job like that. I hefted my kit and came back to him, squatting down and handing him a swab. He took it with a little preoccupied nod. Greg was a few feet off, still trying to talk on the phone.

"Until we get further notice, I suggest we start processing this as a scene. Better safe than sorry," Grissom murmured. "Tell me, what's your impression?"

GRISSOM

This wasn't good. The carelessness with the address wasn't a big issue—it happens now and then as a byproduct of rushing or confusion—but the situation in front of us was disturbing and possibly dangerous. I didn't want to alarm Sara or Greg with my speculation, but there were several factors here that made the hair on the back of my neck go up.

A single patrol car for a multiple homicide is unheard of. There should have been at least two and possibly three, if only for the manpower needed to secure the crime scene. The call had come in within the last two hours, and yet the car in front of us was dark, and cold to the touch. It had to have been here for at least three to four hours, maybe longer.

I could see that the keys were still in the ignition. No officer would risk leaving his keys in an unsecured scene.

The blood, too, was disturbing. Not the quantity, but the splatter—globs splashed in a pattern that indicated the attack had come from the direction of the stores. More and more I was convinced that our best course of action would be to pile back into the Denali—if not to drive away, at least to wait for backup.

I wondered too, if this was actually our crime scene at all, or a random situation we'd inadvertently stumbled onto. As I bagged the blood sample, Sara spoke softly, urgently to me.

"I am seriously creeped out here, Grissom. This isn't . . . right. We're not even sure it's our site. Where are the other people, the vehicles? It's not as if we could have gotten here first."

I nodded. "I agree. At the same time though, it's clear that some sort of crime has occurred here."

Sara glanced around again and sighed. "You know what Brass would say about us going in to an unsecured scene—"

Greg came over, cutting her off as he dropped down to talk to us. Even though there was no one else around, we were all huddled and whispering to each other. He held out his cell phone. "I'm not getting any passable reception, guys. I reached Lou, and then it began cutting out on me. I think he heard me ask about the address, but I can't be sure."

I looked to Sara; she already had her phone out. That's one of the many things I've come to admire about her—she's quick on the uptake, frighteningly so at times. Now more than ever I appreciate her calm demeanor—especially in light of our private, growing relationship. I still can't believe my good luck in finally getting to know her better; rather a minor miracle in itself.

Certainly I intended to make up for lost time with her, and in fact we already had plans for dinner at her place after work, but given our current situation it was better to concentrate on simply getting through this dilemma than allow myself to be distracted by memories of her kisses.

It was very hard though, to look at her tempting mouth and not think of them.

Greg broke into my thoughts and I was grateful for it. "Shouldn't someone have checked on a missing officer? Cops are required to check in hourly, but this car's been sitting here for longer than that."

I turned my Mag-lite towards the interior of the car. Sara nodded and I did too, reluctantly. Before any of us could say anything more, a low moan came echoing out across the parking lot. We all froze; I watched Greg flinch at the sound, which was eerie enough to make me grit my teeth.

"Crap, what was that?" he asked in a tremulous voice. I didn't have the heart to reprimand him—the sound was nerve-wracking. We waited; all of us looked through the darkness at the buildings.

Next to me, Sara spoke softly. "In a store that big, shouldn't they have safety lights on?"

"Yes," I told her, feeling a quicksilver surge of adrenaline moving through me. The fight or flight response was close at hand now, and I could tell I wasn't alone in that. "We need to get back into the car. Now."

Greg's shoulders slumped in relief, and I rose up just as another moan sounded in the still, dark night.

This one was more menacing and came from behind us. Sara swung her flashlight around, the brilliant beam making an arc of light through the blackness, and it swept across the empty space for a few seconds before lighting up the figure of a woman. I took in the sight of a blood-spattered salon apron, and a name badge that read 'Monique' before focusing the fact that her throat was torn open, her esophagus fully exposed and glistening.

How could she be moaning?

How could she be . . . standing?

GREG

ShitfuckooohGODMotherFuckingZOMBIE!

I knew what I was looking at, oh yeah. And sure, it could have been someone pulling a practical joke, or a movie set or any one of a number of logical, reasonable explanations, but my balls and I knew differently then and now.

That was a zombie. No two damned ways about it, a hungry, soul-empty brain-eating monster of the first caliber.

So of course, I dropped my Mag-lite and flinched, bunching up against Sara, who stumbled against Grissom and their flashlight beams went all over the place, cutting through the darkness like spastic searchlights. They slid over moaning Monique, putting a sort of strobe effect on her, which did NOT improve her bloody appearance in the slightest.

Sara was hyperventilating and I don't know what Grissom was doing, but I was trying hard not to whine, because EXCUSE ME, but we are LOOKING at a MONSTER who would LIKE TO EAT OUR BRAINS!

"Miss, are you all right?" Grissom said.

AHH! I wanted to slap him, but I didn't dare take my eyes off the zombie-ette in front of us.

Then she took a step forward, and I felt every hair on my body rise up. Grissom's beam was on her now, strong and full, showing off her shredded throat. Half her face had been gnawed too; she was missing an ear and a lot of hair on the right side of her head.

"Grrrissssom—" Sara growled. "Move. NOW."

She shoved him and I got with the program myself, grabbing her arm and hustling after her and Grissom across the parking lot. Moan-ique was between us and the Denali, damn it, so we didn't exactly have a fallback position at the moment.

We stumbled, speaking of falling, and nearly ended up in a pile at the curb outside of Manly Hammers. I heard Grissom grunt a little. "She's injured."

"Oh she's more than injured. She's dead, Grissom." That was Sara, catching on fast. It's a good thing she and I watch the same sort of movies.

"Then she shouldn't be able to walk—"

"No," I broke in, "But she IS walking and coming towards us. Either of you armed, by the way?"

Sara nodded and I felt a rush of relief. Grissom stared at her a moment, then shook his head. "Mine's in the gun safe in the car."

"Great. And you lecture me about being nonchalant at crime scenes," she told him in a low voice.

"Sara, this isn't the time—"

I was more interested in keeping my eyes on Miss Gory, and interrupted them before it turned into a fight. "Ah guys, it looks like she's not alone—"

Automatically both Sara and Grissom flashed their lights up and around, catching a few other . . . things . . . in the beams. There was our police officer, yep, a once beefy dude by the look of him, and he had no right arm. Beyond him was something moving on the ground that I REALLY didn't want to look at too closely. I hoped it wasn't his arm, you know? Bad enough to have zombies, but disembodied limbs ambulating along add that extra edge of terror that I was so NOT ready to deal with.

"I think that's an arm," Grissom observed, in that tone he gets when something really interests him. Since I was about three seconds from wetting my pants, I again fought back the urge to smack him on the back of his head and looked over at Manly Hammers instead.

Sara already had her gun out. "Okay, this is going from bad to REALLY bad pretty fast, guys—"

"No shit. Look, we have to get moving," I pointed out, trying to sound a lot cooler than I felt. "You're the only one with a weapon, Sare, so no offence, but do you mind if I get behind you?"

"None taken--do it," she gritted out. Loved this woman because she was going to keeping me safe from the monsters. I scooted behind her. Grissom actually took a step forward—did this man NOT have a sense of self-preservation? Was he THAT clueless?

"Grissom, get back!" Sara growled at him. GROWLED I tell you—that was sexy. So was the fact that she had her weapon drawn and pointed at the brain-hungry beautician about ten feet in front of us.

Then the moaning started—

--in low, gruesome, sphincter-puckering stereo.


	2. Chapter 2

_Chapter Two: Dinner Break of the Damned_

SARA

Okay. So we were facing a bunch of zombies. Ah, yeah. This was a little odd, to say the least, but it wasn't as if I could really argue with my central nervous system at that point—while my head knew there were no such things, my body was already kicking into reactive response and I figured what the hey, better go with my gut reaction. Yeah. My guts were having a LOT of reaction, to be honest.

I've seen a lot of things on the job, and usually I don't scare easily, but I hadn't really anticipated being ambushed by the walking dead. That's just not one of the emergency scenarios we have to drill for, you know? So I had my weapon drawn, and I was pretty sure I could put a few rounds in the threat heading towards us, but I held back because it didn't seem right to shoot an unarmed stylist, and because Grissom had decided to play Good Samaritan.

I kept forgetting I'm in love with a man who clearly knew next to nothing about zombies.

"Grissom, get back!" I warned him again. He hesitated, and behind me, Greg was breathing hard.

"She's moving—technically that means she's alive," Grissom tried to argue with me. Before I could point out how utterly wrong he was about that, Greg yelled over my shoulder.

"Grissom, I'm telling you boss, she's missing her trachea, which by all biological standards should put her into the non-ambulatory category. Listen to me good--- She. Should. NOT. Be. Walking. But she is, and that makes her a serious threat, so Holy Mother of God, get back here right NOW!"

I laughed. I know I shouldn't have, but it was so funny to see Grissom flinch at Greg's tone and scurry back to us. I handed my flashlight to Greg and steadied my aim. "Nice use of imperative logic, Champ."

"Debate team, and a lot of arguments with my mother," he told me as he tried to keep the light steady. He didn't do a very good job. Grissom was back next to me, quiet and a little shaken up himself.

Good. Glad he'd finally joined the party.

"Ambulatory dead . . . not ghouls or vampires . . . these are zombies, right?" he muttered. From the corner of my eye, I saw Greg make a 'DUH' face at him and those nervous giggles were threatening to well up out of my stomach again. I mean, how totally surrealistic was this, right? We'd shown up to process a murder scene and ended up on the set of Dawn of the Dead—and even if this was somebody's idea of a joke, it was all a little too real to laugh off.

Nobody was yelling "cut!" or announcing we'd been punk't or even laughing behind the scenes. No, it was just Greg breathing hard, me with my pulse pounding in my ears and Grissom desperately dialing on his cell phone.

The light caught sight of something else moving behind Miss Monique and the cop; I swallowed hard when I saw the two other shambling figures out near the far edge of the parking lot. These two had Cone, Cone on the Range shirts on, and those shirts were very . . . bloody.

"We need to get out of here now," I announced in a raspy voice, "Because I've got a limited amount of ammo, guys."

"The hardware store should have some," Grissom pointed out calmly, and his tone relaxed me. I wondered if he was in some sort of fugue state, but when I shot a glance at him, he was focused on the approaching figures, keeping his flashlight beam on them. "If you take them out at the knees that will probably stop them from reaching us quickly."

"You want me to shoot them?" I asked unsteadily. He gave a slow nod.

Wow. I'd just been authorized to use force—that was a rush.

I gritted my teeth and fired one round.

My shot hit Monique in her knee, and she toppled over, going down so fast I jumped. No blood though. The one-armed cop didn't flinch, although he had been almost abreast of her.

Even the arm on the ground didn't slow down.

"Bullets alone don't work on them; come on Sara, we both know that—" Greg whined in my ear. "What we need are serious weapons, like machetes and shovels and pruning shears—"

For a second, we all paused, looked over our shoulders, right into the darkness of Manly Hammers, and back again at the zombies. Monique was starting to crawl towards us, and I noticed the arm was in a little race with her.

Ew.

"Let's go shopping—" Grissom muttered.

GRISSOM

The division between sanity and insanity is a flexible one at best; narrowing down in any given moment of consciousness to infinitesimal thinness. Up until now, I'd always counted myself on the sane side, albeit tenuous when pushed to the limit by Ecklie's grating staff meetings, or days when Hodges drops by for an informal chat.

Be that as it may, my current situation teetered between those two states of mind, and I wasn't sure quite what to believe. Rationality argued that the biological facts remained constant, while an older, more primitive imperative deep within my locus ceruleus was saying otherwise. Added to that was the immediate and urgent responsibility for my two colleagues, both of whom seemed to know much more about . . . zombies . . . than I did.

Zombies.

I dredged up memories from my childhood, but I'd been a bigger fan of Dracula and the Wolfman than lesser horrors like zombies. At best, I could remember _White Zombie_, with Bela Lugosi as some sort of zombie overseer on a plantation . . .

"Move it or lose it, Grissom!" Greg told me, pushing none too gently against my back. I stood my ground long enough to do a quick sweep of the main entrance of Manly Hammers before turning to the other two.

"The lock for the sliding doors is up there on the top of the sill, to the right."

"Waitaminute, waitaminute, that could lock us inside with more zombies!" Greg announced, but Sara was already backing through the door and reaching up with her free hand for the switch.

"Right now I see four outside, and those are the ones I'm concerned about, Greg."

Sara as always, had an excellent point; the doors had enough pneumatic pressure left to slide closed. I took a moment to pick up a glittering tungsten barbeque fork from the grilling display in the front foyer; the withering look I got from Greg wasn't at all supportive of my choice.

"I don't think poking them is gonna work, Grissom. It will probably just piss them off."

"It's not for them, it's for you if you don't stop talking and listen for movement," I told him, somewhat testily. I don't like being pushed, even if it's for my own safety. Cowed for the moment, Greg took the barbeque tongs and held them out defensively in front of himself as I let the light sweep once more through the dark interior of the store.

Silence, and then . . .

THUMP!!

All of us jumped, but it was merely the one-armed officer crashing into the closed glass of the doors behind us. In the glare of Greg's flashlight, he looked abnormally pale, and I noticed his mouth and chin were covered with old blood. His nametag read 'Krupke'; for one bizarre moment, I flashed back to _West Side Story_, which Sara and I had just watched on AMC not two nights earlier.

She backed up into me, shuddering slightly, gun still drawn, and I knew Sara had seen the tag when she whispered in a slightly strangled voice, "Mariaaaa, I just ate a girl named Maria---"

"Sara—"Carefully I put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. The door was holding; the dead officer beyond it had his one hand out, smacking the glass ineffectively. "Take a deep breath, and let's get to someplace safe," I told her in as calm a voice as I could manage.

It seemed to help; she relaxed a little and turned, back with me again by the relieved look in her eyes. I shone the flashlight beam towards the interior of the store. "We need to find the Sporting Goods or Garden Shop area—that's where the tools will be."

"Phone?" she asked softly. I shook my head. My attempt at connecting to the Lab hadn't been any more successful than Greg's had been, much to my dismay.

"What about the power?" It was a good question; I'd wondered about it myself, in-between musing over my lack of knowledge about zombies and a worrisome fear that the Mag-lite batteries would give out before we found more.

"After we're armed, we can look for the fuse box, although given that the entire complex is out, I think it may be more than just a tripped switch."

GREG

Things . . . were not looking good. Really. I mean, Sara had her gun and had already taken out the head-hungry hairdresser, but Grissom and I had nothing but two thirds of a Weber Grillmaster barbeque accessory pack, for God's sake.

Tongs aren't a weapon, unless you watch a lot of Three Stooges, and even then, trying to drag a zombie around by clamping on his nose just doesn't cut it for me.

No, give me a nice big hatchet, or machete or even better, a bazooka. Yeah, a shoulder mounted rocket launcher would have come in handy right about then; not that I actually knew how to load or fire one. I was barely certified to carry a gun as it was, and right then and there I made a promise to myself that if we got out of our little predicament I'd put in the time at the range, so help me Bobby.

But for the moment, all I had consisted of a flashlight and tongs, damn it.

Grissom turned his light to the signs hanging from the ceiling, slowly letting it settle on the one pointing to the garden area. We moved in a cautious little clump, Sara slightly in front with Grissom and me flanking her. I felt like we ought to start singing 'Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh My,' but kept my mouth shut, because once I got started on the hysterical stuff I didn't think I'd be able to shut it off.

I'd been here before.

Not inside Manly Hammers—or at least not inside this one—but here, right on the edge of losing my sanity. Back when I had my run-in and, ah, over, with Demetrius James. That encounter had given me a taste of my own mortality in a way I was not all that eager to repeat.

Luckily, I had Sara and Grissom to look out for this time. Sara was with the program, just like I knew she would be. She and I are pretty much pragmatists in moments like this, you know? Leave the explanations for later; just get through what needs to be gotten through. Grissom though—he'd hate to hear me say it, but it was pretty clear he was a virgin when it came to monsters. I was also worried that he'd spend too much time trying to figure out the why of all this, and get careless, maybe get bitten.

Jeez, the idea of Grissom as a zombie was enough to empty anyone's backdoor—with the residual intellect he'd have, he'd probably figure out a way to march through Las Vegas within a week. He'd also be smart enough to target the biggest and tastiest brains, which would mean all the lab techs would be gone in a week, except for—

"—Did you hear something?" Sara whispered, and I stopped with her, right in the middle of the central aisle. Both Grissom and I had our flashlights shining forward on either side of her, like headlights.

"Could be the unfortunate souls we left outside—" Grissom offered grimly. I was tempted to look back, but didn't. A clattering noise sounded off to our right; a bunch of plastic coolers spilling into a side aisle. I turned my light and caught a shambling clerk in the beam.

Long blonde hair, blue eyes, cute little Manly Hammers vest--She would have been pretty, if she'd had a lower jaw.

The fallen coolers got in her way as she staggered towards us, and I was already tugging Sara away when Grissom stepped forward again, fork high.

Ooooh man, I was not ready to see my boss try to shish kabob a minimum wage employee, but before I said anything, Grissom jabbed the fork through her sleeve and into the peg board display on the end of the aisle.

Pinned her there like . . .

. . . A bug on a board.

Whoa.

SARA

I reached out for Grissom's collar and tugged to make him back up. Yes, he'd managed to pin the zombie, and that was good, but she was still more than capable of making a grab for him, especially if he just stood there staring at her, the way he was doing.

"Incredible," I heard him mutter. Frankly, I thought she looked pretty gross, myself, with her lower jaw ripped off like that. The smell of old blood was seriously rank around her too, but before I could say anything, Grissom was looking at Greg.

"Give me your tongs."

I tried to figure out what Grissom was up to—he didn't seem like the sort to torture, although I could tell the scientist in him was definitely fascinated by the whole Undead thing going on around us. I was listening, waiting for other noises, and kept hearing little ones that might or might not be trouble.

Hard to tell in a store this big and full of funky acoustics.

"Griss—" Greg argued, but Grissom spoke up.

"I want to get her keys, Greg. She's got a ring of them in her pocket and they might come in handy."

In a rush, I remembered exactly why I loved this guy. Brains and patience, yep. And a nice ass, but now wasn't really the time to think about that.

I was definitely hearing noises, from one of the far corners of the store. The clerk was rocking, not aware of the fork pinning her and keeping her from coming after us, but at any point the material of her sleeve could tear . . .

"We have to get moving Greg—" I snapped, "I promise we'll get you a better weapon; just give Grissom your tongs, okay?"

He looked reluctant. I didn't blame him, because if he did what I said, I'd be the only one armed again. I shifted, all the better to keep myself between Grissom and the far corner, where the noise was coming from. "Any time now, babe—"

Oooh. Mistake right there—Greg shot me this look, and I could tell he didn't know if I meant him or Grissom. I didn't have the heart to clarify, and if Grissom heard me, he didn't say anything.

The tongs clacked, and I watched Grissom out of the corner of my eye as he went key fishing, trying to avoid the jawless clerk's arm swings. Next to me, I felt Greg shudder.

"Point of fact, but how could she bite us if she doesn't have a working jaw?" he muttered.

I re-steadied my grip and sighed. "I don't want to find out, Greg—maybe she'd just sort of hickey us to death, or suck our brains out through our noses."

"Ew."

"Hey, you asked—"

"And deeply regret it, yeah," he replied with that crooked grin I knew so well. "How many aisles to the Garden Department?"

"Four, but I'm hearing things—" I pointed out. My grip on the handle of my gun was getting sweaty, and the tension in my shoulders was starting to ache. I made the mistake of looking back towards the glass doors at the front of the store, and the shadowy outlines Officer Krupke was there, with Monique and his right arm at his feet, both of them sort of thumping softly on the glass.

Not good. I didn't know how much residual intelligence they had, but glass wouldn't hold anything back for long.

"Got them," Grissom told us, waving a glittering ring on the end of the tongs. The clerk was pulling hard now, making whistling noises instead of moaning, and I had the weirdest feeling that some part of her was simply pissed at Grissom for nabbing her keys.

He held them up in the beam of the flashlight and started to look at them when the noise from the far corner got a LOT louder.

And closer.

Without a word, we began moving up the aisles towards the Garden Department, shuffling faster now, passing dark aisles and trying not to freak out as we left the clerk behind. I don't know about Grissom and Greg, but for me, it felt good to be in the middle.

We made it just under the sign that read "Spring bulbs are Here!" when something jumped out at us from the other side of the aisle, over in Plumbing. I spun, pushed Greg away and fired, bracing for the recoil. In the flash of the shot, I got a brief glimpse of a fat, balding zombie with a caved-in head and lots of customer service pins on his Manly Hammers vest. I bet he had been in charge of a department. I bet I'd just shot Herb, your go-to guy for Moen fixtures and locking washers.

Good old Herb, who'd probably been in toilets his entire career.

Damn it, I needed to keep it together and NOT laugh.


	3. Chapter 3

_Chapter Three: Dead Man's Party_

GRISSOM

This was the point at which I suspected my team was a little on edge. Both of them were shaking, and splattered back into the Plumbing aisle were the grisly remains of another zombie—Sara's Glock had definitely put it out of commission.

Normally Greg and Sara were both dependable, professional individuals, even at gory crime scenes and autopsies, but I think it's fair to say that none of us were really prepared for our current situation—I know I wasn't. However, instead of wasting time trying to assess the causes for this contamination, I felt it was better for the three of us to get to a defendable location and plan a strategy.

That strategy included not letting Sara shoot in an enclosed space anymore. The noise had been deafening, and surely an alarm bell to any Undead still in the building. Carefully I pocketed the confiscated keys and flicked my light into Garden Shop, letting it shine over rows and rows of glittering rakes and shiny new shovels. A surge of hope rose in my chest at the sight, and I motioned with my head for Sara and Greg to come along, which they did with alacrity.

"Oh sweet!" Greg sighed, reaching for a shovel. I shook my head.

"Too heavy. Go for one of the spades," I suggested. Greg seemed to consider my comment and moved down the line, to the shorter, lighter digging tools. I turned the beam on the other side and looked at the merchandise there—hand rakes, clippers, little trowels—nothing useful in the immediate display. Then I noted the locked glass case with the machetes and hatchets in it. Much more promising, so I dug the clerk's keys out of my pocket and began hunting for the one that would open the lock while Sara kept watch on the end of main thoroughfare.

"Hurry," she ordered over her shoulder. A shoulder I dearly wanted to kiss, simply because it was bare, and sleek and tempting as always.

"Patience. I don't want to break—"

There was a resounding crash as Greg swung his spade against the front of the case, shattering it; he met my glare with a worried expression and a shrug. "Desperate measures, Grissom—we're in an aisle with open ends and we don't have time to respect commercial property, all right?"

I brushed glass fragments from my jacket and sighed. "On the other hand, giving audio cues as to where we are isn't helpful, Greg."

"Oh," he looked sheepish in the glare of the Mag-lite, and I reached for a Pulaski, hefting it in my hands. The very fact that I was considering what sort of maximum damage it could inflict with the adz edge said a lot about my casual acceptance of our circumstances. I wasn't sure I was pleased about that.

I had a weapon, and was preparing myself to use it on human flesh. Dead human flesh, but still—they had been people once.

More noise came from somewhere north of us, closer to the main front doors, taking me out of my melancholy moment. I looked out over the dark store and thought hard, hoping that the standard Manly Hammers layout held true even as I spoke softly. "Okay—as I recall, the private offices and stock warehouses are all in the back of the store—there should be at least one loading bay, and one emergency exit back there, along with a land line. I think we ought to make our way in that direction."

"Why not back out the front?" Sara asked. "I still have the keys, and that's where the cars are."

"—Annnnd a lot of open space and an unknown number of zombies," Greg filled in, sounding a little discouraged. "We don't have any idea how many may be out there, wandering the neighborhood."

"We'd get better phone reception in the open," Sara argued back. "And there are three cars out there."

"One with a dead battery," I pointed out. "And while the Denali has gas, I can't vouch for the patrol car or the other vehicle."

"The keys you snagged—any car keys?" Greg asked, looking past me into the darkness. I glanced through the ring quickly and shook my head.

"Looks like a work set—office door keys, hex keys, cabinet keys and a magnetic key card, probably for their time clock," I replied.

"Could be helpful," Sara pointed out. She winced a tiny bit—just a flinch and I looked at her sharply.

"Sara, are you all right?" I had to ask since I knew from long experience that she rarely volunteered how she was feeling.

She looked . . . uncomfortable.

SARA

Why now?

That went for everything—for Grissom asking me that question, and for the reason behind it, which was not something I wanted to mention but I was going to have to eventually anyway—

"Um, I know this isn't a good time, but . . . I have to use the bathroom," I muttered, just getting it over with. After I said that, there was this delicate little pause in the conversation, and I didn't dare look at Greg, because I was sure he was smirking over in the dark.

"Ah. Well, I do too. That gives us more imperative to move to the back of the store," Grissom replied, as if this was just some ordinary comment at an ordinary crime scene. Just another night on the job, and a few of us had full bladders—

I looked at Grissom's face in the dim backlight of the flashlight and all of a sudden I could see the strain; the worry there in his eyes. God I loved him. Here he was, pretty much out of his comfort zone with a potential stand-off against zombies, and he didn't want me to be embarrassed about having to pee.

"I have to go too—" Greg chimed in. "No more Big Gulps before shift, that's my new motto."

Another pause ensued, and when I looked at Grissom, I bit my lips not to laugh out loud. He sighed with resignation. "Well, that ends the debate about what direction to go, doesn't it?"

"Go being the operative word," Greg added.

I shifted my gun slightly. "Greg, don't take this personally, but shut up."

He grinned at me then, and reached into the broken case, picking out a firefighter's axe to go with his spade. "Gotcha."

We headed out again, in a bunched group once more, shuffling along the center aisle. It was easy to feel a little cocky at this point—so far, we'd already encountered two zombies and had managed to get around them both without much trouble.

If we got through this, it dawned on me that I could even put it on my resume, and wouldn't that piss Catherine off?

"_Tell us about one of your specialty skills, Ms. Sidle—"_

"_Well, I don't mean to brag, but I do have some experience in disposing of zombies, both with firearms and hand-to-hand—"_

"Oh crap." Greg whimpered, breaking me out of my career-planning moment.

I looked up, and both of the Mag-lite beams were shining over three people crouching in the aisle ahead of us. And taunting me right over their heads was the sign pointing the way to the restrooms.

Why was I not surprised?

After a second, I realized that only two of the people were zombies; the third one between them was . . . lunch. I had a sudden, very unpleasant flashback to pig decomp, mixed in with George A. Romero movies and a little touch of Justin Wilson.

The smell. Did I mention the smell? Some of these guys had been rotting for a while, so the air conditioning must have shut down hours ago---

My mouth was dry in that early warning way that told me I might throw up, so I clamped my teeth hard. Next to me, Grissom shifted; out of the corner of my eye, I watched him move his grasp along the handle of his axe tool from a carrying grip to something more solid. He had his flashlight tucked under his arm.

"Is it possible to reason with them?" he asked us softly. Greg gave a little dry chuckle as ahead of us, the two diners dropped their messy entrée and suddenly lunged in our direction. My finger tightened on the trigger.

"No way, Boss—you might as well try talking a Great White out of going for a bleeding surfer. Speaking of which---"

"Grissom—" I pleaded. He shook his head.

"No more shooting—we may need the bullets later," he added ominously. I winced, but didn't have time to do more because the first zombie was less than a few feet away now and picking up speed. Greg took a step forward, and brought his spade down edgewise; the velocity and force did their thing because with a disgustingly pulpy sound, like a watermelon hitting pavement, Greg split the zombie's skull open.

Oh yeah. Going to barf.

GREG

I am never ever complaining to my mother about having to carve the turkey at Thanksgiving ever again. Slicing up a well-roasted bird with an electric knife in the comfort of a happy kitchen, knowing that Mr. Tom Turkey isn't struggling off the china platter lusting for your cerebellum makes ALL the difference.

So far so good in the preemptive strike; I'd successfully--if messily—downed one of the monsters. Now to er, get my weapon free. At the moment, my spade was stuck in the thing's head, parked from the hairline to right down to between the eyes.

Not pretty.

I had the weird thought of bracing a foot on one shoulder to tug the spade out, like pulling the sword from the stone. Not that I was going to, because that would be . . . gross.

Then Grissom reached over and yanked on the handle; the working end of the spade slid free with a slurpy sound. I could hear Sara quietly throwing up, and my stomach wanted to do a nice ralphing duet with hers right then. Grissom handed me my spade and looked at the other zombie, who was nearly within an arm's reach, fingers flexing.

"One down—" He swung, one-handed with his axe and hit it, right at the neckline with the blade, taking the monster's skull off in one swing as the light beam wobbled. The zombie's head—it used to belong to some African American guy—went tumbling like a stray wet volleyball off towards some sort of mulch display.

So now, the three of us were sort of swaying in the middle of a gore pile. You know, it's one thing to process a crime scene-- to look at all the spatter and body parts objectively--and a completely different thing to look at the bloodbath and know you'd created it.

I wondered how long it had been since we arrived at this damned scene—it felt like hours. Wondered too, if we'd ever get out of this; if we'd ever find out how this all happened. Jeez, I even wondered if they missed us at our original assignment yet; I could practically hear the conversation between Brass and Dispatch:

"_So where are they, Lou? Everybody's getting antsy out here."_

"_No idea, Captain—got a call from Sanders about an hour ago, but the connection wasn't clear. We've been trying to reach them with no success so far sir. Do we have your authorization to send another team?"_

"_Give it half an hour more, then if you don't hear from me, see if you can get Stokes and Willows out here. And let me know if you reach anybody. Brass out."_

And that would be that. Brass would think we'd gotten lost, and nobody would be after us until morning. These were not happy thoughts, and I tightened my grip on my spade.

"Greg—" That was Grissom, pulling me out of my little moment. He had handed Sara a Kleenex from his pocket and was looking at me.

I flexed my shoulders and looked back, and right then I could tell he and I were both thinking the same thing: that no matter what else, we'd work to keep Sara safe.

"I'm okay. Just—grossed out."

"Understandable. I've never . . . decapitated anyone before myself," Grissom murmured, looking at his axe with a wince.

"Which is a good thing," I assured him. "I don't know if I'd want to keep working for a boss with that sort of extreme discipline style. Me, I'm much more receptive to a little talk in your office, or maybe a sharply worded Email—"

"—On the other hand," Grissom shot me one of those little side-long glances he does so well, "The literal threat of getting the axe might work wonders with Hodges."

At that, Sara laughed. A little choked, but it was definitely a snicker. She rose up and turned to face us, embarrassed but looking a hell of a lot better. I motioned with my chin up the aisle. "Race you to the drinking fountain."

"Bottled water," Grissom broke in. "We have no idea what started this contamination."

GRISSOM

I could see that Sara and Greg were starting to feel the effects of stress; too much adrenaline in their systems. By my estimation, we'd been here for nearly forty minutes, and biologically speaking we were all wearing down. We needed to find a place of safety and relax for a while. I looked back towards the distant front doors of Manly Hammers and saw that the first two zombies there had been joined by two more; that reconfirmed that a run for the cars was now our last viable option.

This plague or infection nagged at me, even as we continued our slow walk towards the back of the store. I tried to recall exactly where we were—the very outskirts of Vegas, closer to Indian Springs than the city proper. We weren't far from Nellis, and that had me wondering if there was a connection. I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but then again, we were within two hundred miles of a former atomic test site.

We reached the alcove where the restrooms were located, and I took a look at the doors. They were both closed and hinged on the inside, which meant they could be pushed open, yet I hesitated.

"They could be . . . occupied," Sara murmured unhappily.

Greg grunted. "Yeah, We don't know if these guys are smart enough to pull open a door to get outside—"

"All the more reason for caution," I reminded them. The three of us stood looking at the ladies room door for a moment longer, and then I knocked.

Immediately both Sara and Greg broke out into snickers, which annoyed me slightly—there's nothing inherently wrong with a little courtesy.

"Sorry . . . it's just sort of . . . funny," Sara told me, biting her lip. "You know, as if you expect someone to say—"

"—Hello?" came a quavery voice from behind the door. Sara flinched and Greg twitched, and I'm human enough to admit that I was smug for a moment.

"Hello. My name is Gil Grissom and . . . I'm not a zombie," I finished. It was somewhat obvious of course, but whoever the woman was, she deserved the reassurance.

"You been bitten by one?" she asked sharply. "Touched one, handled one, hell, KISSED one?"

"Kissed one? Lady, that's disgusting," Greg broke in before I could reply. The voice behind the door spoke up again, a bit more confidently.

"Sure is, but then again, you're on the outside and I'm on the inside, you dig? You sound okay, but given thecom-PLETE day from hell that I've had, I'm not really about to unblock this here door until I know for sure you're not going to open up my head like a Tupperware container, dig?"

She sounded intelligent and relatively lucid, so I spoke again. "We dig. May I ask your name, Miss?"

"My name is Louise Miller and I work part-time in the stockroom. Now who else is out there, Gil Grissom?"

"I'm Greg Sanders, " Greg offered, and Sara spoke up too.

"Sara Sidle. Um, Ms. Miller, I have to use your bathroom."

"I bet you do. Where you three from? The police?"

"We're from the Las Vegas Crime Lab," I told her, and suddenly there was a shuffling noise coming from behind us. Greg's beam caught sight of three zombies shuffling into view from one of the aisles. Bizarrely, one of them was pushing a cart, as if still determined to finish shopping despite being dead.

I spoke up again, a little bit faster this time. "Ms. Miller, I appreciate your sense of caution and I'm going to slip my ID under the door, but I have to tell you that we really would appreciate you trusting us, because there are a few . . . complications heading our way."

"ID won't do any good, Mr. Gil Grissom, since I don't have any light in here. Do you see the security gate?"

I looked around. Sure enough, there was a lattice folding security gate on one side of the alcove. Greg tugged on it, and it rolled, accordion-fashion out across the alcove, fastening with a latch on the other side—or it would have, if the lock dangling from it was open.

"Keys, you have the keys—" Sara reminded me and I fished out the clerk's ring, rapidly searching for the one that would fit the padlock.

Greg was holding the steel gate shut, and already beginning to shift his weight from foot to foot, muttering softly. "HurryuphurryuphurryUPGrissom!"

I found the key, jammed it in the lock and popped the thing open, Quickly I hooked it around the latch ends of the gate, securing it to the wall with a definite 'click.'

We were locked into the alcove now, with a bathroom on either side of us, and a little hallway behind us.

The zombies kept moving forward, and by now, even I was disconcerted by their enthusiastic moaning.


	4. Chapter 4

_Chapter Four: The Freaks Come Out at Night_

GREG

Trapped in a cage, like an animal. With Sara. You know, I'd had sordid little fantasies about this very scenario, minus the zombies and clothing and Grissom of course. Much as I admire the big guy as a boss and criminalist, I'm not into mental threesomes that aren't composed of me and two females. Generally naked Sara and Catherine do just fine, with a salacious side helping of Wendy once in a while . . . maybe Sofia, and Mandy . . . once, even Judy—

"Greg get back!" whoah, yeah, out of daydreams and back to reality—

--Where the zombies were. I scooted back as the first pale, grasping arm reached between the bars of the security gate and nearly touched me. Grissom walked over and pushed on the door of the men's room; it opened. He looked back at Sara and cocked his head; she winced a little.

"I don't know if I can, um, you know, with a bunch of zombies moaning outside . . . " she protested. I didn't blame her; I was probably going to have some trouble taking a voluntary whiz myself.

"Concentrate—" Grissom told her, waving an arm into the bathroom. "Here, let me have the gun—"

Sara rolled her eyes but handed her Glock over to Grissom and took his flashlight in return. I could tell she really had to go because she scooted in there pretty fast. Then I heard Ms. Louise calling out to us, over the sound of the grim trio on the other side of the gate.

"Did you lock the gate?"

"We locked it—they're not getting in and they're not happy about it either," Grissom called to her through the door.

"I bet they aren't. Okay, I'm going to open the door, but I warn you, I'm armed, so don't give me trouble—"

I looked at the zombies who were clawing through the aluminum bars and then at Grissom, who gave me back the exact same 'Lady-we-have-bigger-issues-than-hassling-you' look. The ladies room door opened, and Ms. Miller peeked out.

She was a middle-aged round black lady with long braids and wearing a Manly Hammers vest. In one hand she had a cordless nail gun, and in the other, a step edger that I couldn't help noticing already had blood on it.

Grissom nodded at her. "I'm Gil Grissom. This is Greg Sanders."

"Where's the lady?" Ms. Miller asked after nodding at us. All three of us were just looking at the zombies beyond the gate, like they were specimens in a zoo. Talk about surrealistic.

"Men's room—" Grissom waved, and Ms Miller relaxed a bit. She looked at the zombies a second longer, then motioned us further back, into the little hallway.

"Okay, I'm glad you're here and in one piece, because I've been in that john one hellaciously long time. My shift started at six yesterday morning, and since then I have seen things that would make even George A. Romero wet his pants."

That was my cue, and I tried to walk discreetly to the men's room door, because things were getting a little uncomfortable for me in the bladder department. The zombies shifted, and Grissom being who he is, noticed.

"They're tracking him." By him, he meant me of course. Ms. Miller nodded.

"Oh yeah, I think it's a scent thing, or maybe vibrations, because they sure as hell aren't using their eyes."

I was about to knock on the door when it opened and Sara popped out, about giving me a heart attack.

My third for the night so far, if you were keeping count.

She murmured a little "sorry," and stared at the zombies; I noticed she was getting that Grissom look in her eyes—the 'this is fascinating' one that could be trouble, so I snapped my fingers in her face. "Flashlight?"

"Can you hold it and pee at the same time?"

"Peeing is a one-handed affair," I assured Sara. "Trust me."

She snickered. "No hands in my case."

"Yeah, well no aim either," I retorted, and stepped into the bathroom. Okay it was childish, but I really had to go by now, and I really needed a moment to sort of collect myself. I left Grissom and Sara talking to Ms. Miller and leaned my back against the inside of the door, just taking a deep breath.

Bad idea in a men's room, actually, but at least the facility was mostly clean. Went to the nearest urinal and managed to relieve myself without incident, then washed my hands, like a good little CSI. Checked my face out in the mirror. I tend to be pale most of the time, but I was looking particularly spooky tonight.

My stomach growled.

SARA

Ms. Miller was a survivor, oh yeah. She held that nail gun of hers like a pro, and both Grissom and I were happy to let her fill us in on the events prior to our arrival at Manly Hammers. We'd moved to the hallway and a little around the corner so we could all hear each other over the moaning of the zombies.

There were two more of them out there now, joining the shopping cart one and her buddies. Getting to be quite a crowd all pushing against the security gate. I wasn't worried about it holding, but I WAS worried about security in the rest of the building. Fortunately Ms. Miller seemed to know about that.

"When I got here for my shift at six AM yesterday, things were goin' all right. I punched in and headed for my stock section here in the back. I'm in charge of all the plumbing fixtures and sundries, you know—screws and washers and rivets and that kinda thing. My job is to keep the bins in stock and get the next order ready.

Anyway, about noon I hear the local come in—we get trains rolling past us all the time since we're butt up against the track out there—and there's a delivery. That's not unusual either, because Manly prefers to run the garden stuff out quick so the stock doesn't die before it gets here. Nobody buys dead plants, you know?"

Grissom nodded. God he was patient, and a part of me loved him even more for that. Greg came out of the bathroom and waved at the zombies, then joined us in the little hallway, leaning up against the Employee of the Month bulletin board. I felt guilty as hell when I spotted my dead plumbing guy up there for the month of March—He wasn't Herb, he was Len, with a bad toupee and a Polygrip smile.

"Stop it. The guy wasn't the same," Greg told me in a low voice. I looked over at him in surprise and he kept talking. "Come on, Sara—he'd been changed into athing that wanted nothing more than to crack your skull open like a coconut and chew on your cerebellum, so stop feeling guilty. Len would have been grateful that you put him down, okay?"

Ms. Miller was nodding, and I glanced at her. She shrugged. "He's got it right, hon—Len was a bonafide canasta-playing sweetie who would have been totally freaked out if he knew he was gonna end up a brain-muncher."

It was weird comfort, but I nodded, feeling a little better. Grissom was working with his cell phone again and trying to get a signal, but when he started shaking the thing I knew it wasn't happening. I looked up and down the hall. "So—is this area safe? Where are we?"

"Back offices are that way—" Ms. Miller pointed to our right, "And stockroom is that way." She pointed in the opposite direction. "I haven't heard anything from the stockroom, but I think there's at least one . . . thing upstairs—kinda hard for me to tell from down here in the bathroom."

"Locked in? Trapped?" I asked, feeling a little alarmed.

She shrugged. "I'd guess so if we haven't heard it come down—hard to say. If you all would feel safer in the stockroom . . . "

I looked at Grissom and Greg; they nodded and we all made our way to the right, down the hallway. It was really dark here and sort of—claustrophobic. I was rubbing shoulders with Grissom and starting to think maybe this was a bad idea, because getting caught in a tight little hallway like this would make a fight nearly impossible—

Then Ms Miller stepped up to another safety gate at the end, and pulled it open onto a much bigger room lined with shelves and crates. I could breathe again.

I watched as Grissom looked around and took a deep breath himself. He motioned to all of us to sit on the piled bags of cement over by one wall and began to speak in the slow thoughtful voice he uses when he's serious and trying to make a point. I settled back and kept the flashlight beam on the floor.

"All right, we need to come up with a plan; preferably an escape plan. Ms. Miller, give me a few moments to go use the facilities and then I'd like to hear what happened after you came on shift."

She shrugged. "Fair enough, Mr. Gil Grissom. And given the circumstances, I think we can grab what we want out of the lounge room fridge without anybody complaining. Don't know about you guys, but I missed both my lunch AND dinner break, so I am hun-gree!"

So that was how we ended up fifteen minutes later, eating peanut butter sandwiches and washing them down with bottled water while Louise Miller told us the rest of her story. All I can say is that Manly Hammers is a damned decent company for stocking their snack cupboards with both crunchy and smooth peanut butter.

GRISSOM

It's always amazing to me how fear can suppress and increase an appetite at the same time. Given what Sara, Greg and I had seen in the past hour anyone would assume that the last thing we'd want to do is eat; however, all of us, including the irrepressible Ms. Miller happily plowed through our sandwiches in a comradely little feast together.

I suspected we'd need the energy—stress has a way of tapping people out, and we were facing a lot of that at the moment.

Besides, I'd always enjoyed watching Sara eat. Even though she'd deny it, she has a dainty way of nibbling a sandwich; unlike Greg, who works with voracious bites reminiscent of a shark on a section of whale carcass.

At least the dinner break conversation sounded fairly normal:

"Are there any chips? I'd kill for some chips—"

"Here—Doritos or Fritos, Greg—"

"Those aren't chips! Those are corn things. I mean REAL chips—Lays, Pringles—you know, potato chips."

"Um, sorry—this was all I saw in the lunches, unless you want to run the gauntlet back to the cashier's stand at the front and grab a snack bag there."

"Let's see—face an unknown number of mindless gory drooling pestilent zombies for the fleeting joy of a tiny bag that's half filled with air anyway because the contents have settled—"

"You know, I don't have much of an appetite now, not with THAT mental picture—"

"Yeah, I hate stale chips too."

Whistling in the dark, literally. I could have interrupted them, told them to think about our situation, but I knew they were already doing that, and that both of them needed to let off a little anxiety, so I listened to them bicker as I kept an ear out for sounds beyond the stock room.

Ms. Miller polished off a bottle of Mug Root Beer and sighed happily next to me. "All right then, listen up, here's what I know. Like I said, about noon there was a delivery out back on our platform. Nothing unusual about that, and it was stock for the Garden department as usual. I took a look because I've been hoping to pick up a Sanseveria trifasciata for my porch—"

"Awhat?" Greg demanded, but before I could say a word, Sara spoke up, grinning in that way that makes me smile as well.

"A Mother-in-Law's Tongue—Snake plant."

Ms. Miller nodded. "That's the one. Anyway, the plants get unloaded first—nothing special there, just groundcover and a few fruit trees, and then they unload the bags of mulch and fertilizer. I was about to leave because lemme tell you, after sitting in a boiling hot freight car for a few hours, those sacks are RIPE, baby, and you do NOT want to be downwind of that crap, not at all. Anyway, I was about to go when one of the bags snags on the edge of the boxcar and rips open."

"Nasty," I commented, all too aware of what the stench must have been like. "So there was a spill?"

"Oh yeah, but more than that too—the stuff falls on Diego, one of the nurserymen; ends up covering him up to the shins. I was laughing, along with everyone else out on the loading bay, I mean you know how it is when someone gets majorly dumped on, right? So even Diego is cracking up, and then all of a sudden he starts yelling that something BIT him. He jumps up and wipes at his legs and that's when I saw the blood."

"Something bit him?" I asked carefully. Ms. Miller nodded, her expression serious now.

"Oh yeah, right on the calf on the back of his leg. Emilio and Len got over there and started brushing away the manure, trying to get Diego settled down and then Emilio shouts that there's a skull in the crap and that the damned jaws are moving. THAT was enough to freak people out."

"A skull? A human one?" Greg asked. Ms. Miller nodded solemnly.

"Oh yeah, looked kinda like a rotting bowling ball, with one eyeball hanging out and the jaws just snapping away. It was in the manure and when Emilio when to touch it, it tried to take a bite out of him. I was standing right there and saw the whole thing, and I know what it sounds like, but it's the Lord's own truth. That . . . that head was alive somehow."

"What happened to it?" I asked, wondering if it was still out along the railroad, rolling and snapping like some sort of deadly bone armadillo—the image was unintentionally funny and I coughed to cover the smirk that rose up to my mind. Next to me. Sara pounded my back with a little more force than necessary, so I could only guess that she too, had a similarly bizarre image.

"Emilio got a shovel and bashed it in," Ms Miller confided. "Flattened that sucker good, and it cracked like a baaaad egg, oozing this greeny purple goo right out the nose holes."

"Okaaay, I really am done eating now—" Sara announced, and set her half-eaten sandwich down.

GREG

"Soo--can I have the rest of that?" I asked her. Grissom was giving me this look like I'd asked to stick pickles up my nose or something, but Sara nodded and handed it over. I took it and Ms. Miller spoke up again, sighing.

"So we took Diego to the First Aid station, and the dayshift manager—Mr. Hackamore—he was all in a tizzy about whether to call the cops for the bashed up skull or not. And of course, we weren't supposed to let the commotion in the back upset any customers out front, so we ended up with a lot of people sort of running around and not getting much done. Later I found out that Diego bit the company nurse when she washed out the wound. I guess that was the start of it right there."

I finished off Sara's sandwich in a few bites and washed it down with bottled water while Grissom spoke, thinking out loud.

"So you had two people bitten around noon. Did anyone clean up the manure and the skull?"

Ms Miller thought about that a moment, and I watched her while she did.

"I know they cleaned up the fertilizer, because I saw Emilio come back for that, but I don't know about the skull. Mr. Hackamore told all us lookie Loos to get back to work, so I came back here to the stockroom and finished up the inventory on our cases of PVC pipe connectors."

"How long did that take?" Sara asked, and I nodded, because I knew what her line of thinking was—namely figuring out the contagion timeline. Grissom was listening intently too.

Ms. Miller shrugged. "About two hours I guess—it does faster when Lucina is here with me, but she called in sick so I was stuck by myself. I figured all the excitement was over, so I got busy in here and didn't pay much attention to much else going on outside the stockroom. I sorta regret that now."

"You didn't know there was a problem building," Grissom told her in this gentle voice, and for the first time I could see that Ms. Miller was struggling not to cry. I felt bad for her—she had her lips pressed together and she blinked a lot, so I spoke up.

"Sometimes it's hard being a survivor, I know. But we're going to get out of here, Ms. Miller, trust me."

She nodded at me and managed a little smile. Grissom pulled a Sharpie marker out of his vest pocket and was drawing on one of the cinderblock walls, sketching out a timeline, marking one end at noon and the other at two AM. "What happened next, and when did it happen, Ms Miller?"

"Well, I took my break around two, and was going to grab a cone over at the ice cream shop when I noticed that Genese was mopping up blood out near the screen door display. She said she didn't know what happened, but that Mr. Hackamore had told her to get it cleaned up fast and to wear latex gloves. I thought that was weird. When I left the store, I noticed that we only had one cashier—Jeanie I think it was—on duty. Usually we have three or more, and one on the contractor's desk too, but not at two when I stepped out."

"How many employees work at this store during the day?" Sara asked softly. I started to clean up our little lunch, still listening.

Hey, just because we're facing potentially gory death doesn't mean we have to leave a mess, right?

"Hard to say—usually we have about twenty people down on the floor, between the cashiers, restock people and custodial crew. Up in management there are always two or three in the office, so about twenty three?"

"So we'll assume that the infection—if that's what this is—is passed on by bite. Our ground zero patient is Diego, bitten at noon. You said he bit the nurse, and by best guess that would have been about fifteen minutes to half an hour after his initial infection . . . " Grissom muttered, "So did Diego go home?"

Louise nodded. "I'm pretty sure he did—Hackamore would have insisted, after they did some of the Workman's Comp paperwork."

"So he could have run into any number of people on his way out . . . " I added, "as could have the nurse."

"Then we're looking at an exponentially spreading infection, Grissom. Buuuuut, how long a time period does it take to go from bite victim to walking zombie?" Sara asked.

That really was the question none of us could answer. Ms Miller looked thoughtful.


	5. Chapter 5

_Chapter Five: People are Strange_

SARA

Ms Miller spoke up again, and I could tell it was hard for her to tell us what happened next. I didn't blame her—it's not the sort of thing you want to share with people, but we needed the information.

"I don't know. I came back, and things were kind of slow, but you know how things get in retail on hot afternoons. We're sort of isolated out here with the industrial parks all around us, so I wasn't really paying attention to stuff. We close around six, but management always has us stay half an hour after that for cleanup and paperwork. I got busy with mine. I came out to get signed off on my hours and didn't see anybody down on the main floor—that set off the alarm bells in my head."

I nodded to keep her talking; Grissom was doing some sort of calculation on the wall and from the look of the numbers, it was alarming. Greg was starting to pace now, and I couldn't blame him for a growing sense of claustrophobia. Dimly we could hear the moaning of the zombies down the hall at the security gate and I didn't want to admit it was louder than it had been before our lunch.

"So your gut was telling you things were messed up," Greg prompted her, and Ms. Miller nodded.

"Oh yeah. I went looking for Hackamore or somebody to sign my papers, and couldn't find a soul. I paged on the phone down there in the hallway, and while I was waiting, I started hearing that moaning. Totally creeped me out, but I sorta hoped it was some of the guys goofing around, so I didn't pay it no mind. I went back out to look and see if Hackamore was coming, and spotted a HUGE old puddle on the floor over by Gardening. That was enough to send me into the ladies room and block the door with the big garbage can. 'Cause the mess on the floor wasn't blood—it was exactly the same goo that came out of the skull, you dig?" Her voice shook.

"The infectious medium. By doing what you did, you saved yourself. If we could get a sample of that back to the lab—" Grissom muttered, and I felt a little panicked exasperation, so I spoke up, a little harshly.

"Grissom, get real—the stuff's clearly a biohazard and I for one don't think we ought to try going after it unless we've got hazmat suits."

He looked up from his calculations on the wall, startled at my tone I guess, but nodded. Greg was nearly twitching now, and I could tell he was barely holding it together, so I got up and went over to him. One hand on his shoulder and he relaxed, just a little bit.

"Thanks," he whispered and I gave his shoulder a squeeze.

Ms. Miller got up too, and went over to where Grissom was finishing up. She looked at the various equations as I came over; Grissom capped the Sharpie and sighed heavily.

"All we have is hearsay on the rate of infection—no slight intended, Ms. Miller—but working with that limited data gives us an outlook that's fairly . . . "

"Go ahead and say it," I grumbled, "bleak. If Diego bit two people on his way out, then each of them bit two people, by the time Ms. Miller got off work, theoretically, she might be the only employee of Manly Hammers who didn't end up a zombie."

Grissom turned away from us and looked towards the door of the stockroom.

"More than that," Greg muttered over my shoulder. "We've already seen that both the Cone, Cone on the Range employees and the Salon girl were zombies too. The whole strip mall's been infected. My question is, how many of them are wandering off looking for new victims?"

Grissom tensed, and he tossed the pen down. "Grab your weapons--We've got to go. NOW."

I wanted to argue, but the look on his face scared the shit out of me, so I patted my hip for my Glock and followed him. Greg took his shovel and Ms. Miller's hand and we all darted for the door and back out into that narrow hallway.

That's when I made the mistake of turning my flashlight over towards the security gate.

Oh God.

The number of zombies pressing on the security gate HAD increased— and the gate was starting to bend under the forward push. They weren't screaming or fast; no, it was the low groans and relentless drive of them that made the hair go up on the back of my neck again.

Did you ever see a wind up toy walking into a wall? How the damned thing keeps trying to go forward, even though it can't, and it won't change direction or stop until it winds down? Now make that a living corpse, complete with stench and rotting body parts, multiply it by about thirty to thirty five, and you get what we were looking at reaching for us through the safety gate across the alcove.

I froze.

Fortunately Greg and Ms. Miller bumped me along, sweeping me in their wake and down the hall towards a flight of stairs. I could see Grissom already going up, and given the shoving at my back I didn't have any choice about following him.

GRISSOM

The average security gate is designed to withhold the impact of a mid-sized car going up to twenty miles an hour; that's the industry standard as laid down by Underwriter's Laboratories. At the moment, the forward momentum of the crowd downstairs was going to snap either the lock or the hinges of the gate within ten minutes and I didn't want any of us trapped in the stockroom for the duration.

A vague idea had been forming in my mind ever since Ms Miller began telling us about her ordeal, and I tried to keep my thoughts focused as I led everyone up the stairs. At the landing I looked down the upper hallway with my Mag-lite and noted with a sense of despair that there was a puddle of something dark leaking from under one of the doors here. There was a frantic scrabbling too, but it was coming from another door further down. I looked over my shoulder at Sara and she passed me her gun without a word.

"That first office—that's Mr. Lawrence's office. He's the accountant," Ms. Miller whispered. I nodded and let my light drift to the door with the scrabbling. It didn't sound human.

"And that one?"

"That's Mr. Hackamore's office . . . Lord, if he's a zombie one of you is gonna have to do him in, because I can-NOT behead my boss. I may not have liked his attitude sometimes, but he never did anything bad enough to get the bowling ball treatment from me!" Ms Miller shook her head emphatically.

I took a cautious step forward, and a low whine came from under the door. I relaxed a tiny bit. "Did your boss have a . . . dog?"

"Oh geez, he brought Pepito today?" Ms Miller relaxed a bit. "Yeah, he's got this ancient teeny Chihuahua mongrel, good little dog. Hey Pepito baby—" She called out, and the volley of chirpy barks came in return, muffled by the door. I reached for the knob and opened it as Sara and Greg tensed behind me. Out shot a beige shoebox on skinny legs that darted over to us and did a frantic dance. I've never been a fan of toy breeds, but this poor animal was utterly delighted to see us and seemed determined to lick everyone in our group.

Ms. Miller scooped him up and calmed him down. At the back of our group, Greg signaled for everyone to be quiet. We could all hear the creak of the security gate in the silence.

I spoke up. "Okay, here's our situation—we need to get back to the Denali, but barring that, we need a place that the Undead can't reach. Somewhere on this floor there has to be a roof access, and if we can get to that, we can block it off once we're through."

"We can't get down from a twenty four foot roof without a ladder!" Ms. Miller protested. Sara, my bright, quick-thinking Sara spoke up before I could.

"Maybe not, but we should be able to get to the lower roofs of the adjoining stores. Grissom, how did all those zombies get into Manly Hammers? We locked the front door behind us, and there were only a couple we ran into inside—all employees in fact."

"Garden Department," Ms Miller broke in firmly. "It's got a separate door, and I bet that's how they're getting in."

"Which means they have some sort of tracking sense if they started to congregate at the gate," Greg pointed out tersely.

I nodded. "Some form of sensory feedback, although I doubt they communicate with each other. In any case, we're going to have to keep moving and hope that the roof will give us another breathing space. It's . . " I checked my watch, "About two hours to sunrise, and that ought to help a bit if anyone's looking for us."

I looked at them: beautiful pale-faced Sara, frightened Ms. Miller, resolute Greg and bug-eyed, nose-licking Pepito.

My people; all of them.

Except the dog.

"Let's find that roof access."

Greg spoke up quietly. "Uh, Grissom—it's right behind you."

I turned, and the beam of my flashlight swept over a closet door marked _roof access_. I nodded sagely, as if I'd known this all along, and while Greg and Ms. Miller bought it, I could tell by Sara's smirk that my ruse hadn't fooled her at all. We moved to it and I tried the knob, which didn't turn.

"There's key box in Hackamore's office," Ms Miller volunteered. "Might have the one we're looking for."

"On it—" Greg muttered and loped back to the middle office and while he did so, I spoke to Ms. Miller again.

"When did the power go out, do you remember?"

"Lord, let me think . . . had to be after six when I locked myself in—my watch doesn't glow in the dark, but maybe an hour after that? Around seven maybe?"

I nodded. "So the power's been out for about eight hours—someone monitoring the power grid out there HAS to have noticed it by now. If we get high enough, we might be able to see how far the blackout spreads."

Sara headed down the hall and I shot her a worried look, but she waved me off and disappeared into the same office that Greg had gone into.

GREG

The guy's office was a mess. I mean I've SEEN messes, especially on the job. Crime scenes are nothing but messes, with the added condiments of blood, semen, and other bodily fluids better not named. But this place—stacks of paper and files a foot high, old fast food wrappers, soda cans, packing materials, and tons of tools scattered about.

It took me a minute to locate the key box that Ms. Miller mentioned, and when I took a step towards it I barely missed the little surprise that Pepito had left on the rug. Given the state of the carpet, I'd say it wasn't doggy boy's first accident either.

The key box was mounted on the wall, and hanging open, thank God. I peered into it, and just then heard something behind me. I turned, swinging my spade, but Sara sidestepped it and grinned at me. "Good reflexes there, Ninja-san."

"Sara—I could have killed you!" I grumbled. "And watch your step."

"Watch my---ew! Grrrreat. As if I don't have enough issues right now. Is there a Kleenex somewhere?" she grumbled. I shrugged and waved my head.

"Somewhere—looks like this office has a lot of everything. Might be some cleaning wipes near the desk."

She had her shoe off and was holding it out gingerly; I turned back to the key safe and looked into it. "Terrific—about half the labels are peeling off of the hooks. I always thought you had to be efficient to run a hardware store, you know?"

Sara made a distracted noise. "If the people under you are efficient, management doesn't have to be, necessarily. Ooh, shop wipes, yeah. The building access row is probably the top one."

"Bingo." God Sara's smart. She hadn't even looked in the box and had it figured out. I took the keys over the peeling label 'RoOf' and turned to her. "How'd you know that?"

She finished wiping off her shoe and tossed the wipe into the empty garbage can next to the desk. "Case two years ago at a Manly Hammers in south Vegas. Shooting in one of the offices—I dusted the key safe in that one. See any rope?"

"Rope?" I looked around with her help and we found some coiled up in the corner, near a boxed power saw and some sprinkler heads. Sara hefted it on one of her shoulders and I grinned.

"You look like a mountain climber—anything else in here that would help?"

"Yeah, you see any of those plastic cuff things anywhere? I have an idea---"

So ten minutes later Sara, Grissom and I made a barricade.

If the doors from the offices on opposite sides of the hall were opened at the same time, it very nearly blocked the hallway. And with a pair of plastic cuffs cinched tight across both doorknobs, it's pretty much impassable. I wouldn't count on it holding forever, but it was a start—good enough for me. Ms. Miller was unlocking the roof access door while we did that.

Up we went; Grissom first, then Ms. Miller, then me holding Pepito because Ms. Miller needed both hands to climb, and Sara behind me. I wondered if she was checking out my butt, because had our positions been reversed, I definitely would have been checking hers out. The general lab consensus is that Sara's got the best booty. Catherine's is nice, but she flaunts it a little too much sometimes—a guy likes to notice things without them being waggled all the time.

And Sofia has no booty, sad but true.

Anyway, we went up the ladder for about three rungs and came to a stop. Grissom called down that there was a hatch, so we all waited, hanging onto the metal rungs. Pepito kept trying to lick my nose. In the quiet, we could hear the zombies, and I kept straining to hear something else beyond them.

Like, say, cars.

Or sirens.

Anything to indicate some normality through this unreal night; any sign that life as usual was going on SOME where, and that we might get through this in one piece. I've never been a big fan of end of the world stories, and the thought of being in one—living and dying in one didn't appeal to me at all. I still had so much I wanted to do with my life: surf the great beaches of the world; have more sex; get promoted; beat Warrick at pool; get married maybe—

"It's open," Grissom called down, and I got ready to climb, hoping Sara didn't bump her head on my ass on the way up, or that I'd bump mine into Ms. Miller's.

By the time I made it up through the hatch I was taking deep breaths. The air up here was great; fresh and open. I handed off the dog to Ms. M. and clambered out, looking over the expanse of gravelly flat roof and out around the horizon.

When I looked towards Vegas, the lights there made me tear up a little bit.

I admit it, okay? The reassuring glow off in the distance; that beautiful sin-filled city with 24 hour massage parlors and tinkling slot machines was home, and I'd never wanted to get back to a place more than I did right then.

SARA

So we were up in James Taylor territory, kinda. The gravel didn't make it easy to walk around, but it was big and wide and warm up there. Grissom and Greg broke off a section of satellite dish leg and shoved the bar through the hand loops of the roof access door, so nobody from down below was going to get up through it behind us.

Ms Miller was looking lost and clutching the dog, whispering to it, so I went over to her, just standing close by. She seemed to appreciate that, and spoke to me in a low whisper. "It just doesn't seem real, you know? I'm a big coward; I never did like scary movies anyway. I'm more into a good comedy, like _The Wedding Singer."_

I nodded. "Yeah. Or _Office Space_."

She grinned at that and set Pepito down; he sniffed my shoe and wagged his tail, so I tried to ignore him. Grissom came over to us, Greg with him. "So let's try calling again, and do a quick inventory—what do we have with us?"

A quick check of all our pockets, and five minutes later we were looking at two cell phones; my Glock and three extra rounds; two packs of gum; change; a lighter; a Swiss Army knife; car keys; a can of Binaca; two wallets; and some lip gloss.

"Not a lot," Greg observed thoughtfully. Grissom nodded, and I had to agree—unless we got rescued soon, spending a day up here in the blinding sunlight would be brutal. Made me wish zombies were more like vampires, and just went 'poof' in the daytime.

No such luck. We hadn't even brought any water, not that we'd been planning this little adventure out anyway.

Thank God we'd all used the bathroom and had lunch--

"Phone?"

Grissom pulled his out of the pile and hit a button; we all watched him, and I noticed I could see him a little better now—

Dawn had to be coming.

He blinked, and nearly shouted. "Jim!"

We all crowded closer; kind of an instinctive thing I guess. A sort of hot relief was filling my chest now, spreading through my whole body and making me a little dizzy. God, we got through; it was going to be okay—

"We're . . . South of Nellis, probably Indian Springs. Got the wrong address—Look, just stop bitching for a moment and listen!" Grissom was yelling now, and I shot a glance at Greg. "We're . . . in trouble. Yes, trouble. What kind?"

Helplessly Grissom looked at all of us, and for a moment I could SO feel his pain. What the hell was he going to say? Brass was a lot of things, but receptive to the concept of the walking Undead terrorizing the three of us into climbing on the roof of a Manly Hammers probably wasn't something I could see him believing.

I know I wouldn't have, if I hadn't been there. And, you know—

De-animated a few of them myself.

"It's . . . a hostile situation. We've got some sort of outbreak of . . . disease here. Hang on—" he pressed the phone to his shoulder and looked at Ms. Miller. "Address?"

"Thirteen oh one Pine Plaza, Indian Springs," she recited quickly. Right then we all heard a squeaking, creaking groan filtering up through the quiet night, followed by a meaty sort of crash.

Damn it!

The security gate waaaaay down on the main floor had just broken.


	6. Chapter 6

_It's the End of the World as we Know It (and I feel fine)_

GRISSOM

I still had Jim waiting on the line, but it took a second for me to respond; the sound of the clattering fence down below had sent a surge of very primitive fear along my spine. I'm not ashamed to admit that things were getting VERY beyond my comfort zone now.

The image of the Undead snapping and biting, climbing up the stairs on hands and knees through the darkness, moving relentlessly upward, driven by an ongoing madness for flesh and blood that went beyond reason or logic was . . . Christ, terrifying.

I've never considered myself a brave man. In the face of evil I've sought the logic and looked for the motivations, but in this case it would be easier to look at strains of Ebola and ask why it does what it does. In the sterile and controlled setting of a lab or a hospital, maybe the answers could be found, but right now we were trapped, trapped by my stupidity---

"Gil, say again?" Brass's voice brought me out of my momentary panic and I cleared my throat.

"Th-thirteen oh one Pine Plaza!" I yelled. "Jim, it's a Bio-hazard situation; do NOT come without protective gear, got that?"

"What kind of hazard? Chemical? You got something radioac—"

The call went dead; a complete silence that cut us off. I looked at the phone, but it still had an hour's worth of charge on it, and up until that moment, the reception had been perfect. I turned it off and tried to turn it back on, but it didn't, and that was even more odd. Sara looked at Greg, and he took his out, but it didn't activate either.

"Freaky," he muttered, and I was inclined to agree with him.

"Think he got enough?" Sara asked softly. I didn't want to bolster false hope, but I had a feeling that Brass had, and nodded.

"So now?" Greg asked, and I gave him the answer none of us wanted to hear.

"So now we wait."

Waiting has never been something I've enjoyed, even when it was for something pleasant, like Christmas, or a plane. I try not to fidget, or waste time, but my usual outlets of reading or sleeping weren't really options at the moment. After walking all around the edge of the Manly Hammers building, I found a spot up against the cinder blocks of one of the vent housings and sat down for a while, thinking.

Sara joined me, and the comfort of her up against my side felt extremely good. Had we been alone on the roof, I would have put my arm around her and debated doing it anyway. She solved the problem by laying her head on my shoulder and speaking softly. "So . . . this isn't really how I pictured our third date going."

"No," I agreed with a dry smile. "Not quite."

"See, I had this whole scenario going where I invited you back to my place, and while we talked about where we wanted to go for dinner, we'd be making out like fiends, and eventually I'd lead you off to my bedroom for our first serious . . . you know."

I groaned a little, taking in her words and fleshing them out with some stunning visuals, mostly of her in an erotic state of undress.

Sara laughed. "You sound like one of the things downstairs."

"Trust me, it's a very living reaction to images of you that have nothing to do with your brains, impressive as they are," I assured her. "And I have my own thing downstairs."

"Yeah, I remember—I still have the indentation on my thigh," she murmured, making me blush. I haven't blushed in years, and yet around this personal, private Sara, I did quite often.

It felt good. Fine, in fact, even in the face of our bleak situation.

Then the dog came over and sniffed Sara's shoe; she sighed, reached for him and patted his head. "So. . . what's the plan, Grissom? Are we going to consider going down to the roof of the ice cream parlor and beyond, or stick it out here?"

"Both have pros and cons," I sighed. "Pros--right now we're at the highest point, so we're more likely to be spotted by any helicopters. It's also the biggest roof of all of them, so we've got space for something to land here. I'm also sure that the Undead won't be able to push their way to the surface from the roof access ladder since it only allows one person at a time."

"And the cons?"

"Right now we have no supplies beyond our handful of items. We also risk exposure to the sun in the daytime. With no water, we're sure to dehydrate quickly, especially Ms. Miller and myself, since we have more . . . bulk than you and Greg."

"More mass-- and in a good way—" she teased. "I have a suggestion, if you're open to hearing it."

"What's that?"

"Let me and Greg go down to Cone, Cone on the Range."

GREG

Ms Miller only worked part-time at Manly Hammers.

She and I were sitting on the edge facing out over the parking lot, looking down over the Denali and the police car out in the darkness and talking. Below us at the front doors were a few of the more stupid zombies still trying to push up against the locked doors, and with them was Officer Krupke's arm even now knocking on the glass.

I heaved a rock at it. What the hell was it crawling around for anyway? It wasn't going to be eating a brain, not without teeth, a mouth or a digestive system. It unnerved the hell out of me because it seemed to show that even if you chopped up a zombie, parts of it kept going with the original imprinted imperative—namely, 'hunt prey.'

I wondered if it was because the arm used to belong to a policeman—sort of the predator of society, as it were.

"—The rest of the time I deliver singing telegrams for Happy Cluck."

"Happy Cluck—the singing, dancing chicken people?" I asked her, distracted for a moment from the arm way down below. She nodded. I threw another rock and hit the arm, right in the bicep and I wasn't sure--

--but I swear it flipped me off.

Leaning over and watching, Ms. Miller shook her head. "Uh-oh . . . looks like you aren't exactly making a friend down there, Greg."

I shrugged. "What's he going to do—climb up here and bitch slap me?"

That set her off, and let me tell you, when Ms. Louise Miller goes into the giggle zone, look out, because you're going to get taken there too. She laughed, all big and hearty; I couldn't help myself and busted up as well. Every time we looked at each other we started laughing, and when Ms. Miller crossed her eyes and made a slapping gesture I had to sit down just to breathe.

It felt good, and I can't really tell you why—maybe because even in the middle of the worst case scenario, there was still enough residual . . . goofiness to keep me from going numb. So I sat there wheezing a little, and Ms. Miller dropped down next to me, our backs against the ledge of the roof, both of us catching our breath.

"Oh Lord . . . Too damned . . . funny," she chuckled again, shaking her long braids out. "We make it through this night, I don't think I'll ever forget that snap, baby."

"Yeah," I admitted, feeling just a little better now. "I oughta give myself a high five for that one—"

That set her off again, and I just basked in the sound of her giggles. When they died down again, I looked over at her, and she smiled at me.

"You ever thought of doin' stand up? You'd be good at it," Ms. Miller told me. I shook my head, but felt warm at the compliment.

"Nah—too much of a science geek for that, but thanks. So you really are a Happy Cluck Telegram Chicken?"

That was a heck of a mental image. I'm not saying Ms. Miller was fat—she was more of what my grandfather would have called 'cuddling plump.' Not that I minded; when it comes to women I'm pretty open-minded these days. More so than I used to be . . . this job's made me see and understand a lot.

"Oh yeah, and I'm the best. I can sing on key, I don't mind looking foolish or posing for pictures, and I love to make people happy. Back when I worked at Chuck E. Cheese I was one of the best Chuckies they ever had in that costume. I'd hug kids, let'em pull on my tail—whatever. Was a pretty sweet gig, for minimum wage."

"What happened?" I asked her. She sighed.

"Kinky boss—wanted to do me . . .in the suit."

"Get out!" I spluttered. I have just as many twisted fantasies as the next guy, but doing it with Chuck E. Cheese after hours in the ball pit was NOT a mental happy place. Ms. Miller laughed a little.

"Oh yeah—It's freaky world out there, Greg, Frea-ky. So tell me about yourself—no offense, but you look kinda young to be a police scientist."

So I gave her the quick version of Greg Sanders, Geek, CSI, all-round amazing guy. It wasn't supposed to take long, but she kept asking me questions, and I'd have to backtrack a little. By the time I reached the part about the Sherlock Holmes case and making CSI, I could see her face, nodding and watching me.

Dawn was definitely coming.

SARA

It took a while to convince Grissom. I knew if I kept working on the logical aspects of the situation he'd finally agree—he can't really fight facts, and the big ones of dehydration and sun exposure were pretty bleak. It was getting lighter now, and I could see more of his features. He looked stressed. I was sure I wasn't exactly the poster girl for serenity myself, but waiting has never been easy for me.

From what I could see, the Cone, Cone on the Range store was flush up against the Manly Hammers building and shared part of a wall—the one over the Garden department in fact. The drop off was only about eight to ten feet, and I was pretty sure Greg and I could rappel down that far without a problem, if we were careful.

"What will you use to protect your hands?" Grissom asked me skeptically.

"My socks," I told him calmly. I had been thinking about this for a while. He tried not to look impressed, but when I nudged him he gave a small nod. I added, "Not a lot of protection, but better than bare palms."

"Sara—I'm still not happy with the idea. Splitting up is dangerous, and we have no idea if the shop has anything useful or even if you can get into it. "

"Nevertheless," I prompted him. Grissom's mouth twitched; I SO had his number.

"Nevertheless, I suppose it's worth a try," he admitted.

I looked at him. At some point in the night, Pepito had decided Grissom was a Dog Person and had curled up in his lap. He looked sort of cute, but being an old dog he had this problem with . . . emissions? Both Grissom and I had been ignoring it for the last hour, but right at this moment, Pepito shifted and a little treble note blatted out of the back end of him.

"I think I'd prefer the zombies—" Grissom muttered, but he was too tenderhearted to just brush the dog on the ground. I was holding back my hilarity as best I could while Grissom gently scooped the Chihuahua up and set him amid the gravel. Pepito stretched, which resulted in another little series of toots, and trotted off, arthritically to take care of some business.

"Come on, before he gets back," I whispered, and Grissom rolled his eyes. We rose up, and I heard the cartilage snapping and popping in our knees. Grissom rolled his head a little and looked out to where the clear glow on the horizon heralded dawn.

We made it over to where Greg and Ms. Miller were sitting and broke the idea to them.

Greg was all for it; Ms. Miller was cautiously supportive. "The water thing was on my mind too," she admitted, "And I know for a fact that the store's got some in a big case along with sodas. But the door's gonna be open, and that means you won't be the only ones who can get in, you know?"

"It's not a big place—we can probably barricade the door and take our time," Greg suggested.

Grissom said nothing at first; I could see he was thinking, and when he finally did speak, he spoke low. "Water would be the first priority, then shade. If you can find aprons or tarps or anything we can use for shelter from the sun, take it. We should also put one of our vests up as high as we can on one of the antennas here, so people on the ground can spot it."

One of the things I love about Grissom is how he takes charge without really even thinking about it. Sure, Greg and I had been working with him for years and for us to follow his lead was natural, but right now, even Ms. Miller was nodding, listening to him.

"First of all, we need to secure the rope and hang it down to see if we've got enough."

We took the coil of rope I'd snagged from the office and wrapped part of it around the housing vent. Grissom tied it off, securing a good bowline, and Greg uncoiled the other end, walking it towards the edged of the building where the Cone, Cone on the Range was. He reached the edge, no problem, and tossed it over the side; it dropped down and reached the other store with a couple of feet to spare.

Ms. Miller cheered, and I grinned—for the first time it looked like something was going our way. I looked at Grissom and he had a faint smile as he came over to join us at the edge. Greg was looking down, nodding to himself and I heard him pointing something out.

"See those rails? I think Cone, Cone may have a ladder built on the side of the building. If that's the case, then we're sitting pretty in terms of getting down to ground level."

GRISSOM

"Don't be too sure," I told Greg. "Check it out, but if it doesn't reach all the way down, skip it—the last thing you want to do if you get chased down there is to jump for a ladder and miss it."

It was clear Greg hadn't though of that, and he nodded tightly.

Sara was already sitting, pulling off her shoes and peeling her socks off. Her feet were pale in the light, long and narrow. She wrinkled her nose and laid the socks aside as she put her shoes back on and Greg did the same with his, taking longer to lace his sneakers tightly.

They both got up again, and slipped their hands into their socks, making mittens of them. Sara's hands looked like little white paws, and Greg's . . .

It was time. I knew Sara would take the lead; she's always felt a strong sense of responsibility for Greg and would take good care of him down there. I passed her the Glock and spoke to them both.

"Climb down carefully. Don't take any risks; Ms. Miller and I will be right here, waiting and listening. We'll pull you back up one at a time. Keep your ears open—not just for us, but for anything that sounds like help—a siren, a phone ringing—anything at all. And—"

I was going to say 'be careful' but I didn't get the chance to do that because Sara threw her arms around my neck and kissed me.

Kissing Sara is . . . words fail me. I haven't done it enough to be able to quantify it, or resist it. She's by turns passionate and tender and when she kisses me, the whole focus of my world narrows down to her lanky frame in my arms. Sara kisses completely; body and soul; all of her heart in every one.

Dimly I was aware of Ms. Miller whooping a little, and Greg muttering 'whoa!' but only as background noise. Sara broke away from me and grinned, unashamed and licking her lips. "I needed that for luck," she murmured.

"Excuse me, but I could use some luck?" Greg broke in, but he was grinning, and when I met his gaze there was something there in that glance between us that pacified any excuse I was going to make. I smiled crookedly.

"I'd kiss you Greg, but Sara's the jealous type," I told him.

Greg snorted, and even Ms. Miller laughed. Sara patted her Glock at the small of her back once more, and moved over to the ledge. Working carefully, she eased herself over the side and began to shimmy down the rope. The difference in height between the two store was only about twelve feet, but it was enough to make me tense. A fall would be no laughing matter.

Sara was halfway down and we had the rope braced when the sun finally came out fully. The long shadows stretched out over the gravelly rooftops and I for one was glad to see it. Night might be cooler, temperature-wise, but visibility was going to be a benefit.

Ms. Miller gave Greg a hug. "I'm not gonna kiss you, but you take whatever luck you need, okay?"

"Thanks," he murmured and squeezed her back. Down on the Cone, Cone on the Range roof, Sara was peeling off her sockmittens and stuffing them into her vest pockets. I noted she was flexing her hands and called down to her.

"Sara! Are you okay?"

"I'm good—rope's a little prickly, but I'm good. Let me check that possible ladder—" she called back.

I shook my head. "Wait for Greg—"

He was over the side now, and had his legs wrapped around the rope in a fashion I dimly remembered from ancient days in PE classes. Ms Miller was bracing the rope, trying to keep it steady for him.

Sara turned back and steadied the line from the bottom, standing on the rope, adding her weight to pin it. Greg wasn't as coordinated as Sara, and it was when he was nearly a fourth of the way down that he slipped and fell.

Ms. Miller gasped and I gripped the edge helplessly, watching Greg tumble the last nine feet down and hit Sara, knocking her flat and driving the breath from both of them with an audible 'Woof!' that carried on the still morning air.

"Greg! Sara!" I yelled, and all the fear and regrets I'd been harboring roiled in my brain, bubbling up only to be quelled a few seconds later by Greg weakly rolling off the love of my life.

"Ow," he called up. Sara rolled in the other direction, waving a hand weakly up at me to indicate she was all right.

I'm not sure I believed it, especially since she was cradling her stomach, and bent over. Greg clambered on his hands and knees to her—

She threw up on him.


	7. Chapter 7

_Chapter Seven: I Eat Cannibal_

GREG

Okay, I can't really get mad at Sara for ralphing on me—I did drop nine feet and let her break my fall with her body, but I'm not really thrilled at being coated with semi-digested chunky peanut butter either.

"Gahhh," I mumbled, wishing I could wipe off my shirt; she'd missed my vest, luckily. Maybe we'd find a sink in the back of the ice cream parlor where I could wash it, hopefully. Sara had this expression on her face; half embarrassed and half laughing—sort of caught between the two as she wiped her mouth on her sleeve.

Grissom was yelling at us from above. "Sara! Are you okay?"

"I'm okay . . . just got the lunch knocked out of me—" she chuffed up at him. I looked up at Grissom in time to see him smirking.

"Oh thanks for asking about my FALL," I called up to him. "Yeah, I'm a-okay."

"Oh that's good—" Ms Miller called down.

Nice to know SOME one cared. Sara was wheezing a little, but she managed to blurt out, "Sorry!" and I nodded. Not going to hold it against her—I'm just lucky, and I know it. I could be lying here with a broken spine.

"Let's see if we can find water down there, because I'm not wearing your peanut yak butter for the rest of the day, Sare."

"You never . . . know," she shot back, finally straightening up. "Could be . . . the ultimate Zombie deterrent."

THAT was a gross thought, and I pushed it aside as I carefully looked around the roof. There was enough light to see stuff, and I noted that they had a vent housing too, just like Manly Hammers—

Air conditioning is big in Vegas.

We both looked around a little, noting a lot of garbage up on this roof—crushed cups, some tumbleweed and stray paper mostly—and then wandered over to the railings curving over the side of the building. They looked a little like the handles of a pool ladder, and when we looked over the side, sure enough, it was a ladder.

Sara peered over the edge. "It's an extension. Our weight will bring it down, and if we wanted to pull it up again, we'd need to find the crank somewhere down in the store."

"Hear anything?" I asked her, and dropped silent. She still had her head sort of over the side and shook it. I jogged back to where the rope was dangling from Manly Hammers and called up to Grissom.

"It's an extension drop ladder."

"On springs, or ratchets?" Grissom asked, so I jogged back to Sara and relayed the question.

"Ratchets—that's why it needs a crank," she told me and I headed back to Grissom with the info.

He didn't look happy. "If you can't find the crank, the ladder will stay in the down position—it could be risky."

I waved my arms around. "Not like we're really safe here as it is, Grissom—besides, I reeeeeally need to change my shirt."

That last got to him and he nodded, so I headed back to where Sara was. She had her Glock out and was still looking over the side.

"Heard something?" I asked. She shook her head.

"Nope, but we're not taking any chances. I'll go first; you follow—" Sara looked at me and added, "—Try not to fall on me this time, okay? I do have a loaded weapon."

Like I'd done it on purpose last time—sheesh!

She climbed down, deliberately making her moves muffled, and I did the same. We slipped into the shadows of the buildings, and off to the right in the alley I saw nothing but the garbage dumpster between Cone, Cone on the Range and the Beauty Salon next door. Sara reached the concrete-covered ground and already had her weapon out, stance all alert, like one of Charlie's Angels.

It was quiet. Too quiet. I stayed close to the lady with the gun and we carefully made our way to the sidewalk along the front of the stores. I don't know about Sara, but I was on Red Alert, as Archie would say, ready for anything to pop out at us. We sort of shuffled together and looked around from the alley out at the parking lot.

Nothing. We could, however, hear faint moaning—far enough away to be over in Manly Hammers. Sara shifted a little and looked into the glass window of Cone, Cone. "Door's open. I don't see anyone . . . living," she finished in a sad little tone. I risked a peek, noting the blood spatter along the normally white freezer case in the front window.

And the former manager, folded up and stuffed inside it.

SARA

It always makes me sad when places geared for families and kids end up as crime scenes. I hate it when we have to process shoot outs at Chuck E. Cheese, or accidents at Arcade World.

And ice cream parlors are right up there. One of the few places in our society where the whole point is to have half an hour of close, fun times with the people you care most about—these should never be touched by violence, but they are.

The Cone, Cone store was open and quiet; mostly because the two employees were probably off with the crowd in Manly Hammers. As for the manager . . . He was definitely on ice. I tried not to look at him as Greg and I made our way in, step by step.

"Promise me if we hear anything, see anything dangerous, you'll run to the ladder, Greg," I whispered over my shoulder.

"Grissom would kill me if I left you behind," he replied. "And not just because you totally liplocked on him either. What's up with that by the way?"

"Nothing," I blurted out, damning myself for doing it because Greg knows me well enough to pick up on my lies. We were inside the store now, walking through the overturned tables and moving towards the register. The smell of old blood hung in the air and I knew the flies would be thick pretty soon.

"Yeah, well that 'nothing' is the biggest 'something' going on outside of our little situation here," Greg replied, his tone just smug enough to get my hackles up. I hate that tone and he knows I hate that tone, too.

"Greg—" I growled, making my way behind the counter. I noted the back cabinets were closed, and there was a sink here. "—Take off your shirt."

"Now we're talking," he responded, as glad to see the sink as I was. He peeled off his vest and shirt, then carried it to the sink, turning on the faucet while I looked around for bottled water.

There was a standing refrigerated case against one wall filled with sodas and near the bottom, water, so I moved over to it and loaded up my vest pockets with several of them. Over at the sink, Greg was doing that laundry thing, but I got his attention. "On the wall—"

He looked over at the display I was pointing to. "Not my size—"

"Better than wearing a wet shirt," I told him and there wasn't much argument for that. Greg's a clothes horse—he doesn't like to admit it, but it's true. He came over, arms crossed over his bare chest—as if I hadn't seen it before.

Snerk.

He tugged the Cone, Cone tee-shirt off the wall, away from the "Join the Birthday Club!" display and pulled it on over his head. I kept my eyes on the door, feeling a little prickle along the back of my neck. Something seemed off, but I wasn't sure what, just yet.

It dawned on me how tired I was; the adrenaline had me jazzed for the moment, but under it, I was close to exhaustion. I looked around again, at all the melted cardboard tubs of ice cream, soupy and sad in the freezer cases around me and for a minute I was tempted to just scoop some up and lick it off my fingers. Didn't of course—it was probably full of Salmonella by now.

Greg whined. "Crap. It's too small," and I looked at him.

Oh God—the bright blue girly tee-shirt barely made it to his cute little belly button, and the sleeves just capped his long biceps—he looked like a total hootchie Boy Toy now, complete with pissed off, pouty expression, and I started laughing.

Greg rolled his eyes and looked to the ceiling as he put his vest on over the shirt. This did not make things better, since now he looked like a biker's bitch. "Knock it off, Sara—if you hadn't have barfed on me, I wouldn't be stuck in this."

"Oh really? Yeah, um, dropping down on me like I was your personal trampoline had nothing—" I began, but we both stopped when across the parlor, the body in the front freezer case began to move.

GRISSOM

Nearly two decades ago I first watched the superlative film _Zulu_, starring Michael Caine and Stanley Baker, and while sitting with Ms. Miller, the movie came back to mind with full force as I noted the parallel of the movie plot and our own situation.

Down below us were an unknown but significant number of nameless, faceless enemies eager for our flesh, if the evidence could be trusted.

There were four of us against them. Like the soldiers in the movie, we'd lasted through the night, but unless we got help or re-enforcements at some point soon, we'd be stuck in a siege up here—one that would end slowly and very painfully. These were the facts, ugly but honest, and I was weighing our course of action carefully.

It seemed unavoidable that we would have to climb down to Cone, Cone on the Range and down the extension ladder then make a run for the Denali. The initial problem was getting Ms. Miller and myself off the roof. I'm lighter than I used to be, but climbing down the side of a building would be risky for me, and probably beyond the capacity of Ms. Miller without help.

Nevertheless, if we didn't hear from someone within the next three hours, we'd have to start planning on it.

I looked out towards Las Vegas, and then northward, towards Nellis, realizing I hadn't heard a single plane all through the night. Ms. Miller was keeping an eye out over the ledge where the rope hung, patting Pepito as she did so.

"We will get out of this," I told her. She looked up and flashed me a smile; small but confident.

"I know it--You got good people with you, Mr. Gil Grissom. Smart, calm—seen all the right kind of movies . . . " she pointed out. "Good at takin' care of themselves."

"I'm lucky that way," I agreed. Just then there was a 'thump' from the roof hatch. Both Ms Miller and I looked over in time to see the iron doors jump a little.

"Oooooh shit—" she whimpered. The last thing I wanted to do was go back towards that hatch, but a few more hard bumps would dislodge the satellite leg pinning it closed. What I needed was either a chain, or weight.

All I had at the moment was weight. I climbed up on the low platform and stood on the hatch doors, hating it, feeling the cold chill of panic nipping at my spine, but doing it because this was the only thing I could do.

Ah the irony of being nothing more than one large paperweight, for the moment. Fortunately, I had time to wedge the metal bar of the satellite dish more tightly along the handles of the access at my feet, which helped. The zombies under me would have trouble with leverage now, but I couldn't—WE couldn't—allow them to be able to get even a finger through.

Ms Miller was slowly moving closer, looking fearful in the early morning light. I tried to smile reassuringly. "They won't be able to push through from the ladder—no momentum."

"Uh-huh," she muttered doubtfully, but with a determined look she joined me in standing on the metal doors of the hatch, wrapping one arm around me to balance herself.

Ah.

"Let's do this thing right then—you plus me on these here doors is going to hold the fort, right?" she murmured a little more confidently. "At least until Greg and Sara make it back."

"Yes, easily," I told her, feeling a camaraderie of the damned. "I'm one hundred and eighty pounds, and that added to your—"

Ms Miller's hard-eyed _Don't-GO-there_ look stopped me dead. I coughed. "—ahhhh . . . we're going to be fine, " I finished, lamely.

"Amen," she nodded. "Amen."

We stood there, and the moans rising up around our feet were louder, and more ominous, muffled only by the metal. I tried not to hyperventilate but it wasn't easy, and just when I thought I'd gotten a grip on my breathing, a gunshot broke the stillness of the morning.

"Sara!" I yelled instinctively, and hopped off the hatch door, running to the ledge of the building, in my blind haste leaving Ms. Miller standing alone.

GREG

For the record, I love baby teeshirts—on girls, that is. I love the way they cling and tease, allowing for a flash of belly button and the promise of riding up. I do NOT, however, like wearing one.

Especially one in powder blue, with 'Cone, Cone on the Range' across the front in rainbow lettering.

Not only is it a terrible thing for a man of proud Viking heritage to wear, it's even worse to think of being turned into a zombie wearing one. You've heard the phrase "wouldn't be caught dead wearing that?" It looked like I was just about to be, and even my CSI vest wasn't going to be enough to offset the damned shirt.

"I thought he was dead!" Sara griped, her Glock out and aimed at the whitish-blue arm that was now hanging over the edge of the freezer case. She and I were still behind the counter, but that wasn't going to offer us a lot of protection.

"He is—he's just not taking it lying down," I told her. Yeah it was a stupid thing to say, but it just popped out. You have to understand . . . this guy—zombie—was between us and the door.

Between us and the door. As in, we would have to kill him to get around him.

What am I saying? The dude was already dead—we'd have to incapacitate him to get around him. And not get bitten ourselves.

I was pretty close to wetting myself—something that hasn't happened since I was six. Sara shifted her stance and took better aim. She spoke over her shoulder to me, in that low voice she gets when she's concentrating. "Is there a back door?"

I hadn't even thought of that. There would have to be, legally. I hesitated. "You want me to check?"

"Yesssss---" Even when she's scared Sara can show she's pissed off too. I backed up and turned, looked around. Back little walk through with more freezer cases, and yes, two doors—one to the bathroom, and one that looked as if it faced the alley. I turned the handle and it was locked.

Then I turned the lock and unlocked it, feeling massively stupid—I guess fear really does make you overlook the obvious. In any case I called back to Sara. "It's open."

"Get out—" she told me, and I looked up to see her tightening the trigger. Mr. Mangled Manager was halfway out of the case now, and permafrost was not a good look on him. He had a huge hole in his neck and his head was crooked because the muscles are all severed on that side.

He was still wearing his name badge: _Jeff Tullon._

Worse than that, he was focusing on us; I could see him sway a little, centering in on me and Sara in a self-correcting way, like a hunting dog. It was fascinating and scary as shit. "Shoot Sara, shoot!" I muttered.

She did—fired off a round right into the middle of his managerial forehead, opening up a big hole and blowing out bits of . . . matter out the back of his skull. For a moment he staggered, driven back a step by the impact.

But—and this was the real testicle tightener—he didn't fall.

"Oh fuck," Sara groaned. We both heard Grissom's yell way above us, and it broke the spell; Sara shifted her aim and fired again, taking out the zombie at the kneecap; this did make him fawl down boom, as Brass would have said. I hooked an arm around Sara's waist and tugged her towards the door in back.

"Come on, the others will have heard that—" I warned her, feeling new adrenaline and wanting to run like hell. Sara nodded, crowding so fast behind me she was practically plastered to my backside, and we stumbled through the door. Three long steps and we were at the ladder again, full circle. I waved to her to go up but she shook her head.

"I have the gun—go, GO Greg!" she ordered, and I clambered up, slipping a little, feeling my heart pounding like a heavy metal baseline. Up I went, stumbling over the ledge and falling onto the gravelly roof, rolling to get out of the way. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Grissom on the Manley roof, staring anxiously at me, and I scrambled to reach back to the ladder to help Sara.

She was halfway up, Glock still in hand, looking grim when I noticed the blood running down her forearm.


	8. Chapter 8

_Chapter Eight When You're Strange_

SARA

It's really hard to climb a ladder with a drawn gun . . . I'm just putting that in because I learned first-hand that between the awkwardness and the fear, my level of coordination goes right out the window.

I made it to the top and sort of stumbled onto the roof, trying to catch my breath when Greg grabbed my arm, looking at it, and I saw it too. Oh shit . . . I was bleeding.

"Sara, were you—" he gulped and I shook my head, wiping the area to show the jagged scrape.

"Slipped on the edge of the ladder . . . damn it! I don't remember my last tetanus booster either . . . "

Grissom interrupted us, yelling from the Manly Hammers Roof. "Sara!" He had that undertone in his voice; the really concerned one and I felt warm all over.

I jogged over to the dangling rope and called up to him. "I'm fine! Banged myself up on the ladder, but we're both okay—"

To prove it, I reached into my vest and tossed up one of the bottles of water; Grissom snagged it easily and set it down, then caught the two others while Greg came over. Ms. Miller and Pepito were peering over the ledge at us too, and she gave a little yelp—I guess I was bleeding more than I thought.

"It's just a scrape—we saw one zombie in the ice cream shop, but Sara put him down." Greg reassured her. She looked over her shoulder and then back at us.

"That's good, but what in God's name are you wearing, Greg?"

"Just . . a little something I picked up in the shop—" he told her and I cracked up again. Grissom didn't smile; he was focused on me.

We've got zombies on the ladder inside Manly," he told us in that matter of fact way he has. I moved over to the rope and grabbed it.

"So are you guys coming down?" I asked him, waiting for his decision. He and Ms. Miller would have a hell of a time descending, but if zombies were about to make it through the hatch, I'd let Grissom fall on me gladly.

I'd probably let him do it even if there weren't any zombies involved at all, actually. I could think of several scenarios with moving bodies with a much shorter distance between them—

"I think—" Grissom began, but right then Pepito started barking his head off, so intent that he sort of bounced on his old, rickety forelegs. He wasn't specific though, so we were all sort of looking around, wondering what had set him off. I had the Glock out, and Greg was scanning the roof with me . . .

Then we all heard it at about the same time and looked up.

A helicopter—just a black dot coming from the northeast, but clear and getting bigger with every second. A big, double ended military helicopter that looked like a sea slug with an umbrella at each end.

I'm sure Grissom or Greg would have been able to identify it—my personal make and model database was limited to cars, and to be honest, only those I'd pulled apart myself—but whatever that big ugly thing was, I loved it. No way zombies would be flying a thing like that, no fucking way.

They were heading in our direction, and I suddenly realized that Greg and I needed to get back up on the Manly Hammers roof if we were going to catch a ride with Grissom, Ms. Miller and Pepito. I set the safety on the gun and jammed it into my vest pocket, then looked at Mr. Birthday Club next to me.

"Think you can make it up?"

"Baby, for a sight like that, I could wall crawl like freakin' Spider-Man," he assured me, grinning.

I helped him get started up; Greg climbed as if he were going for the President's Physical Fitness Award in a PE class. I was concentrating on keeping the rope steady from down below, so I didn't pay attention behind me.

Isn't that always how it is in the damned movies? This would have been the point at which all the people in the audience would be screaming "Look behind you, look behind you!"

As it was, I had Grissom, hollering over the maniac barking of Pepito and the dull, vibrating approaching chopper. "Saaa-raaaa!"

Yep, coming up the damned ladder—

A zombie.

And I was pretty sure he wasn't going to hold the rope steady for me.

GRISSOM

The CH-47 Chinook out of Nellis was a welcome site—but I didn't have much time to fully appreciate how wonderful when Sara was about to be ambushed by a half-brained zombie.

Literally in both senses.

"Sara!" I yelled again, knowing it was stupid to distract her, but feeling a helplessness I never wanted to feel again. Sara turned, drew her weapon, aimed—

Nothing happened.

The zombie clambered between the curved rails of the ladder, stumbling onto the gravel of the parlor roof while Sara stood there for a second, frozen, then began fumbling with her Glock. There wasn't any time for that, and I yelled once more. "Rope, honey! Wrap it around you and we'll haul you up!"

She shoved the gun in her pocket, grabbed the rope and looped it around her waist. I glanced back behind me—Ms. Miller and Greg were nodding, and already grabbing the rope. I looked down over the edge again, and called to Sara. "Hang on TIGHT!"

I pulled, and once again adrenaline kicked in, along with fear. The line went taut, and together with Ms. Miller and Greg, I pulled, not giving a damn about rope burn or pressure or straining muscles, just focused on the all-encompassing need to GETSARAOUT.

The rope came in, slowly and while I longed to hurry the process, I definitely didn't want to drop her, so I dug in my heels and called back to my two pulling comrades. "More!"

"Yeah, one . . . two . . . three—" Greg grunted, and together we all gave a strong, united yank. Sara's head and shoulders appeared over the ledge; she grabbed it, smearing blood from her arm along the bricks. We pulled again and got her torso over the ledge, then I moved.

I don't run, at least not often or well, but I was kneeling at Sara's side in seconds, pulling her to me, checking her over and generally preoccupied with her well-being. So much so, that I was oblivious to the arrival of the Chinook overhead until its shadow engulfed us.

"I'm fine, I'm fine . . . forgot to take the damned safety off the gun," Sara told me huskily. "I'm okay."

"You're bleeding. That's never okay," I told her, and the whole moment hit me then; that I might have lost her—lost her in the most hideous, heart wrenching way possible. Clumsily I pulled her to me, determined not to waste any more precious time. "I love you."

"I know," she replied with a cheeky smugness that I might have been slightly hurt by, had I not seen how beautifully luminous her eyes were at that moment, wide and sweet and brown . . .

"Hey!" came Greg's protest, but I kissed her anyway, glad to the depths of my soul for the opportunity. Even Pepito bouncing over and enthusiastically snuffling my backside didn't change that.

Then the Chinook arrived, hovering over the roof, close enough for us to see the door on the side open and someone lean out of it.

"So—anybody need a ride?" came the familiar voice through a bullhorn.

I've never been so glad to have Brass leading the cavalry.

The chopper didn't land; they rolled out a ladder with weights on the end to stabilize it, and up we went: Ms. Miller, whimpering and moving slowly, then Greg with Pepito under his arm, then Sara, with me right behind her.

I had the best view, frankly, and I won't deny that I took advantage of it all the way up, considering it a nice compensation for the hellish night we'd all been through.

Inside we were herded into an enclosed plastic-lined holding area within the chopper; a move I understood but didn't appreciate. Greg had an arm around Ms. Miller, and she was crying. Dimly I was aware of other plastic-lined pens, and other people, crying, talking around us. I called to Brass, and he moved closer, looking at us through the plastic, his features distorted by it.

"What the hell is going on?" I tried to yell over the noise, but the helicopter was rising, the rumble of the engine and vibrato of the blades making casual talk impossible. Brass shrugged and made a placating gesture with his hands, so I moved closer to Sara and put an arm around her, looking at her scrape.

It wasn't too bad; more of an edged cut from elbow to mid-forearm, and when the chopper lifted, she jostled against me, getting some blood on my shirt. I didn't care, frankly—we were safe, and on our way out of the danger zone.

We flew on, back to Nellis, I guessed, although none of us were near a window to be able to see. From the noise around us, I estimated there were about fifteen to twenty other people in quarantine holding pens like ours here in the helicopter.

I wanted to sleep, but didn't, and let Sara doze against me instead.

GREG

Back in the dark ages of my high school years when the Army recruiter tried to interest me in signing up, he'd point to the poster of the tanks and choppers and talk about being a hero. And I'd nod and then laugh my head off when I walked on, because there was no way on God's green earth I was ever going to climb into a metal monstrosity like a CH-47 Chinook.

It was good to be wrong. It was so very, very good to be absolutely wrong on that one. This huge, rattling, ugly flying Quonset hut of a helicopter was now my home, yes indeed. I loved every inch of it, especially the fact that it was carrying us away from the mutant horde of brain-eating undead zombies thankyouverymuch. I wondered if I could look up that old recruiter and send him a thank you note---

We were in a sealed plastic isolation pen, and I could appreciate the precautions in this case. Since none of us were contaminated, I assumed that once we got to where ever it was we were going, we'd be examined, probably debriefed and maybe inoculated.

That was a cool idea—anti-Zombie vaccine. I wondered if they had developed it yet. Heck, I wondered how long this disease or disorder had been around, come to think of it. And if it came here in a skull packed in manure, where did the manure come from? Were there zombies somewhere else? From the sound of it, we weren't the only ones to be rescued . . .

I wanted to sleep, but the more I thought about things, the more . . . uncomfortable I got. Back when we were down at the hardware store it was easy to not think and just go with reactive reflexes, but up here, with a moment to catch up on a few nagging thoughts, I couldn't help considering that the four of us were now in the hands of the government.

Of course Brass was here, and that helped alleviate a few fears, but still, it was a long time before I completely relaxed. The chopper was too noisy for conversation, and to be honest I was dead tired, so I let myself snooze a bit. Next to me, Ms. Miller did the same, the two of us sort of making a puppy pile up against the side of the plastic. It made it official when Pepito joined us, wheezing and uh, contributing to global warming in his own little doggy way.

I'm not sure how long I was semi-conscious; fatigue and the downslide from adrenaline will take it out of you. All I did know was that when the pitch of the engine shifted, I woke up with a jolt. Ms. Miller was still out, and that was good because I realized I'd sort of . . . had my head on her chest.

Snuggling.

Don't get me wrong—I'm totally about the 'adversity makes allies of us all' school of thought—but then again, I didn't want Ms. Miller to get a mistaken notion about my intentions here. So I tried to sit up without disturbing her and probably would have made it if she hadn't started laughing, which I could feel under my cheek through all the luscious padding.

"If you weren't so damned adorable, Greg Sanders—" she rumbled, and kissed the top of my head. Kissed it!

I don't think I've ever blushed so much—not even when Archie Photoshopped my face onto the A & F Quarterly. I sat up and she smirked at me. "Oh don't worry about it—I'm built for comfort, and anyway, I've got a boyfriend--sort of."

"He's a lucky guy," I told her and meant it. Whoever it was that had Ms. Miller's generous heart had to be a prince among men. We grinned at each other, and she pointed with her chin to the rest of the helicopter.

"Think we're landing?"

"It's possible . . . although I can't tell you where," I shouted back. "I'm not sure how long we've been flying."

"A while," she agreed cautiously. Then the helicopter dipped lower, and I felt the hard bounce of a landing. Across from us, Grissom and Sara were waking up, and I must say that if Ms. Miller and I had been comfy, the two of them looked positively Cuddle City, sheesh! All little smiles at each other, and molded together like they were made to fit---

About time.

Anyway, Grissom got to his feet and tried to look through the plastic for Brass I guess, and I heard lots of other people starting to stir around us in their pens as well. Ms. Miller and I got up; I didn't know about anybody else, but I really needed to pee and hoped whatever briefing they'd give us would be a short one.

They unzipped the pen and two guys in full biohazard suits came in. They were holding rifles, and I kept my mouth shut. A third one with a clipboard stepped in after them, and spoke up; I could tell from his voice he was A) a military dude, and B) scared.

"Are you the CSIs from Vegas?" he asked, and Grissom nodded.

SARA

The floor of a helicopter isn't really the most comfortable place to sleep, but compared to what we'd just left behind, I wasn't about to bitch, no way. Besides, I had some cushioning in the form of Grissom, and believe me, I took shameless advantage of that, right in full view of Greg. Heh—why not? Fighting zombies sort of puts the whole 'dating a co-worker' into perspective, really, and I don't think it was too much of a surprise for Greg anyway. He's pretty sharp at times.

Anyway, by the time we landed, I'd already decided that what I absolutely wanted was a shower and a nap with Grissom. I wasn't really prepared when the first part of it happened against my will; the Biohazard suit with the clipboard caught sight of my forearm and sort of jumped back. "We've got blood on the woman! Get them to Decontamination, Stat!"

"No, I'm not contamin—" I tried to tell them but the first suit with a rifle jabbed his gun at me and started to herd me out. Grissom stepped in, all protective and manly (I'll admit that turned me on a bit, too—) but one sight of his shirt with my smears on it made the Clipboard guy freak out even more and he pointed at Grissom.

"Second contamination! Take them both to the showers!"

"Hey wait a minute—" I heard Greg protest, but the clacking of the rifles being cocked got all of us quiet VERY fast. I still had my Glock but I wasn't going to be stupid here—better to just follow directions and talk later to someone not pointing a gun in our faces.

Slowly Grissom and I stepped forward, hands up and moved down a plastic tunnel. I was starting to get claustrophobic now, not thrilled at feeling like a leftover in a giant Ziploc baggie. One of the rifle toting Bio-boys was behind us, herding us along. We climbed down a plastic-lined ramp out of the helicopter and I barely had time to feel some sunshine coming through the opaque walls before Grissom and I were hustled through another door and into a tile-lined room. There were two showerheads in one little alcove and the rest of the place was about the size of a walk in closet.

The door closed behind us—Rifle Bio didn't come in the shower so I guessed he was the one throwing the bolts we heard clanging on the other side of the door. Right then an amplified voice ordered us to, "Strip down and step under the showerheads!"

I got mad. I mean, what the fuck? Here we'd survived a vicious night by anyone's standards—death, dismemberment, zombies—and now some military honcho was going to order us around? I looked up to see a camera focused on us from the corner of the white, tiled room, and it was only by sheer force of will that I didn't flip it the bird.

Grissom didn't look any happier, and called out to the disembodied voice. "We are NOT contaminated! We'd like to TALK to someone, please—preferably Jim Brass of the Las Vegas Police Department!"

"In due time, Doctor Grissom. For the moment, we're taking the situation extremely seriously, and the best way to expedite it would be to cooperate fully. We're giving you the option of showering yourselves—don't make us use force to do it TO you," the amplified, disembodied voice came back at us.

"Yeah, well who ARE you?" I yelled, getting more and more frustrated—the last thing I wanted after this night from hell was to be watched doing a bubble scrub with my boss.

Notice I didn't say I minded doing a bubble scrub—I just minded being watched—after all, there are some limits for the third date.

"I'm Colonel Isaac Phillips and I'm in charge of the federally mandated emergency protocol for this particular incident, Ms. Sidle. My son assured me that both you and Doctor Grissom are intelligent, competent people who would understand the necessities of our situation. Please don't make this process any more difficult than it already is."

"You're David's father?" I asked, a little blown away by this. Grissom was already unbuttoning his shirt, which was a bit distracting too.

"I am. Now please, scrub yourselves down as quickly as possible and we'll talk face to face afterwards—there's a lot to discuss."

Crap. It didn't look like there was any way out of this, and for a moment I thought I'd rather be facing the zombies. Then Grissom cleared his throat. "We can stand back to back, Sara, and minimize the embarrassment, honey."

I looked over at Grissom, who had his bare spine to me, and for one long second I felt such a surge of love for the man that I'm sure it radiated off me like a thermal charge. Only Grissom would worry about my privacy. Only Grissom would care enough about my feelings to suggest a solution.

Only Grissom.

"Damn it, I love you," I muttered, and started pulling my clothes off.

GRISSOM

Out of all the fantasies I'd ever conjured up of myself and Sara, none of them had taken place in a Decontamination shower, and certainly not under the unblinking lens of a monitor camera. Exotic as a few of my daydreams have been, even I had my limits.

Nevertheless, the sooner we got on with the process, the sooner we could get out and dressed; that was worth the embarrassment, so I finished undressing, moved over to the nearest showerhead, turning it on with a twist of the dial, and avoiding the first blast, which was sure to be cold.

Fact of life—the first ten seconds of any shower are icy.

I kept my attention on the water, trying very hard not to look at Sara, who was undressing off to my left. This was a very difficult thing to do. If I ever get any sort of credit for gallantry, this would be the capper, because ninety nine point eight percent of me wanted desperately to look. Having kissed and cuddled with Sara definitely had me interested in moving further into intimacy, and being naked together was inhumanly tempting.

And then, she put her arms around me from behind.

Oh God—instant hydraulics. This was NOT expected, and I gasped. In response, she giggled, which I found to be both annoying and arousing. "Sara!"

"You're going to need someone to scrub your back—" she told me cheerfully in that throaty tone of hers that was NOT helping the situation upfront.

"Now isn't the time—" I pleaded firmly, only to get a nip on the shoulder that made me quiver. Sara spoke again, her voice lower.

"Sure it is. We've got some privacy—" she pointed out. Puzzled, I looked over at the camera and saw Sara's blouse hanging on it, effectively blocking the lens.

Over the loudspeaker, Colonel Phillips spoke up, his tone NOT amused. "Please cooperate, Ms Sidle and remove the clothing from the lens."

"No. Doctor Grissom and I are going to shower in privacy. If it's that damned critical that you monitor us, you'll have to send someone in to remove it yourself," she snapped back, and I had to agree with her. I picked up the decon foam can and shook it.

There was no answer from Colonel Phillips, and I took that as discretion on his part. Sara pressed more closely to my back and for some reason it was difficult to breathe normally. Then she wrapped her arms around me, fingers stroking my ribs, and things became much more . . . intensely immediate.

Or immediately intense, as the case may be.

Between the hot water, the decon foam and a sleekly beautiful naked woman I was in love with, not only did I get thoroughly cleaned of any zombie-related pathogens, but I also discovered that Sara Sidle is unbelievably erotic when wet. Whatever hesitations I had were quickly overcome by Sara's kisses and talented fingers, and for the first time in my life, I truly appreciated how two people of the same height can use that fact to their mutually . . . upright . . . satisfaction.

Is it possible for a rational man to be grateful for the bizarre events of the night for leading us to this . . . climax? The question is not rhetorical and the answer is yes.

By the time we were done . . . scrubbing, the water had gotten much cooler and a certain prune effect had begun to wrinkle our fingertips. Reluctantly Sara and I turned off the water and she tiptoed up to pull the blouse off of the monitor. I noted that there were folded scrubs and towels in plastic bags on a shelf, and moved to open them. We dried off and dressed, not saying much verbally, but the comfort of Sara's affectionate gaze and the stroke of her cool hand along my cheek spoke volumes to me.

The door opened, and two medical orderlies stepped in, followed by a doctor, none of them in hazmat suits. The doctor was smirking slightly. "Time for a quick medical exam—" he told us. We were poked and prodded, had blood drawn and Sara's scrape was properly cleaned and bandaged.

After that, we were ushered into a small room with a table, chairs and a TV monitor to rejoin Greg and Ms. Miller, who were also dressed in scrubs. I had an unbidden, unreal image of the two of them showering together, but clearly that had NOT been the case.

"Are you two okay?" was my first question. Greg nodded, giving Sara a quick hug.

"Fine. Got to shower and change; they took Pepito off to quarantine. So have they told you anything?" he asked. I shook my head. Ms Miller had hugged Sara too and now hugged me warmly before pulling back and sighing.

"Us neither. I don't mind telling you, Gil Grissom, I'm still scared."

Before I could say anything comforting, the door opened, and two men came in. The first man I didn't recognize, but I did the second—Brass.

GREG

Oh man it felt GOOD to see the Brassman! He looked rumpled and tired, but he smiled and I felt myself relax a little, because whatever happened now, at least I had Grissom and Brass to looking out for us. Sara moved to hug him and he held onto her for a good squeeze before letting her go again. "Hey . . . well, you guys look like you've had a hell of a night."

"That's not even the half of it," Grissom replied, and I could feel the tension unwind in the room. The other man, a white-haired ramrod in a flight suit cleared his throat and held out his hand. Grissom shook it, and I did too as he murmured, "Colonel Phillips. Shall we sit down?"

We did.

Colonel Phillips began speaking. "I'm sure you have a lot of questions, and I'll be happy to answer what I can, but before that, let me tell you what we do know and what the situation is to the moment. I've been assured that as employees of the state, you've already signed your SF-312s, so what I'm about to tell you is covered under that agreement. Ms. Miller, thank you for signing yours in this last hour."

She nodded, looking a little wary and I gave her a wink just to reassure her. Colonel Phillips sat up a little straighter, if that was possible and started talking in earnest now.

"The particular biohazard that the four of you encountered yesterday is a particularly virulent pathogen that's been endemic to parts of China and Korea for the past centuries. It's a virus, but with the capacity to mutate constantly, and for hundreds of years it's infected sections of Asia. The United States first encountered it during the Korean War, and some of our top pathologists and Biohazard people have been working ever since to develop a vaccine against it. It's been code-named Resurrection Virus, and naturally all information about it is considered Top Secret.

"In the past ten years, military intelligence has learned that the north Koreans were experimenting with Resurrection as a possible bio-weapon—naturally this has been a threat that we've been keeping a very close eye on for the past three years in particular. We've planned out our emergency plans for any full-scale attack involving Resurrection Virus and we put part of that into action last night when the first reports came in from the area south of our facility.

"Naturally we assumed it was a deliberate attack, but as we worked our way in from the outermost cases, it became clear that the point of origin was the shopping center in North Indian Springs. Since this didn't seem to be a target of any significant military or patriotic significance, we've hypothesized that the contamination was accidental, the result of an imported specimen undetected by Customs."

Grissom and Ms. Miller nodded in confirmation; Colonel Phillips relaxed a little. "Can you tell me anything about it?"

So Ms. Miller spoke up, telling the colonel exactly what she'd told the three of us earlier about the bag of manure and the skull. I was fighting yawns at this point because it was WAY past my bedtime and I was hungry to boot. I perked up when Ms. Miller talked about running into us and how brave and smart we all were, and listened to Grissom pick up the narration about the rest of our little adventures, but I was fading fast.

I was on the verge of dozing off when Brass started talking about how he'd been stopped from coming into Indian Springs and how David had gotten through to Colonel Phillips and arranged for the rescue in the Chinook. Then Sara spoke up, and her voice was very quiet. "What will happen to the store? If you can't tell the public the truth---"

The colonel turned on the TV monitor and we saw the footage behind the news anchor; a blazing inferno rolling thick thunderheads of smoke into the sky. Ms. Miller gave a little gasp. "Oh my God—Manly Hammers!"

"Necessary, Ms. Miller, and believe me, nobody is as sorry about it as I am," the colonel murmured. "We thoroughly searched the buildings for any other survivors like yourselves and found none. This is being reported as a gas main explosion, and the federal government will move through a few dummy insurance corporations to offer the victim's families some compensation for their losses."

Ms. Miller started to cry. This was the first time, and I took her in my arms while she sobbed, feeling that she sort of spoke for us all in that moment. She'd known those people, worked with them and knew their names—

"Have you stopped the spread of Resurrection?" Grissom asked quietly, "this time?" He had that cutting edge in his voice, and I expected the colonel to get mad, but he didn't. He nodded slowly.

"Yes. And well put, Doctor Grissom. This time. This was an accidental infection, but next time we may not be nearly so lucky."

00oo00oo00

So here we are, six months later, still doing what we do at crime scenes, and doing it well if I'm permitted to brag a little. Of course, Brass and I are keeping the smoldering hot Grissom/Sidle romance a secret nowadays, which is kind of fun, and wonder of wonders, we have a new Community Liaison person who does the scout tours and educational visits to the schools.

I call her Trudie Jane nowadays instead of Ms. Miller, and sometimes after work I go over to her place and have a beer while Pepito makes himself comfortable in my lap. Sometimes we talk about work, and sometimes we go to the movies, but we never go to see the zombie ones.

And--

Every now and then when the nightmares get bad, I come over and hold her until we fall asleep.

END


End file.
